It is 25 years and counting as Aberdeen try to end their long wait for all three league points at Ibrox.
You have to go all the way back to September 1991 for the last time the Dons beat Rangers on their own turf, with Brian Grant and Eoin Jess scoring the goals in a 2-0 win for Alex Smith’s side.
He has had no influence on Aberdeen’s poor run of results there but manager Derek McInnes would love to put the pain of the League Cup final defeat by Celtic last week behind him by breaking the cycle of away matches in Govan for his club.
He said: “It is hard to believe. There have been some good Aberdeen teams who have gone there over the years, too.
“I think that shows you the difficulty involved in playing there.
“When Rangers start well and get on top of you, it can be a tough place for any opposition.
“Hopefully, we can go there and be good enough, on the day, to change that stat – because it’s not good reading for us.”
Certainly, becoming the first Dons team to win there can act as a motivational tool for the Dons manager but he insists it will not dominate his pre-match talk tomorrow.
When asked if he would mention it to his players McInnes said: “You will probably mention it in the paper, won’t you?
“But September 1991, it is something. Sometimes you use any sort of motivation that is relevant. Being the first Aberdeen team to win there for so long would come into that.
“I don’t think it will be at the forefront of my motivation – but it certainly won’t do any harm to mention.
“I’m sure it will be spoken about and the players will be aware of that.
“The motivation is for ourselves to go there and try to get three points, get that winning feeling again – and feel good about ourselves.
“It’s not been the best of weeks. But every other team would have wanted to be in that final, facing Celtic, so we were lucky to be involved in it.
“We just didn’t do ourselves justice on the day. That’s the disappointing thing.
“It’s good to get the players back in and going again. Hopefully, we win on Saturday – for loads of reasons.”
