As the Scottish league programme winds down and holidays draw near, there may have been many supporters across the nation this weekend witnessing performances more aimless and insipid than they might otherwise expect.
Aberdeen’s, though, would not have anticipated being among them.
With the stakes high and the margin for error negligible, this should have been a day for the Dons to come out fighting and attempt to seize control of their destiny.
Instead they left Paisley having failed to register not only a point but even so much as a shot on target, putting their European entry stage for next season back into the melting pot. Dundee United will have a chance to turn up the heat before the Reds are next in action, with the final day meeting at Tannadice looking ever more like a winner-takes-all battle.
Despite Saturday’s loss it remains, surely, a question of when Aberdeen secure one of the five European tickets rather than if, such is the sequence of compounding results which it would take to place them beneath St Mirren.
But it now seems likely it will take Hampden heroics for it to be the one for the box seat; instead they face the prospect of a restricted view of the league phase.
They can have no realistic complaints, for even when they have been on lengthy spurts of success these pedestrian, unthreatening afternoons have always been lurking around the corner.
Teams have simply not found it frightening or uncomfortable enough to face Aberdeen for large parts of the season.
Too often they have failed to take the initiative in matches, particularly those in which they would have been favoured to make the running. That, having installed a relatively sound foundation, will be the challenge for year two of the Jimmy Thelin project.
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