Dons legend Frank McDougall insists Aberdeen must face Rangers with the belief they can overcome the runaway Premiership leaders.
The Dons host an in-form Rangers side who sit 19 points clear at the top of the table and have yet to lose in 22 league games.
Derek McInnes’ Reds have lost both league games against Gers this season, including a 4-0 humbling at Ibrox in November.
McDougall, 62, regularly beat Rangers and Celtic while leading the line for the Dons in the eighties.
He said: “The key to beating Rangers and Celtic is belief. When I signed on at Aberdeen we went to those grounds and thought ‘we are going to win’.
“That was the Fergie (Sir Alex Ferguson) mentality.
“Obviously this current team cannot compare to the side I played in, but Derek has built a good side that should be beating Rangers. I am not saying they are a title-winning side, but this team can hold their own with anyone.
“You just have to go against Rangers with the mentality of ‘we are going to win’.”
McDougall was a master at shooting down Rangers and Celtic during his trophy-laden two seasons at Pittodrie.
He netted a hat-trick in a 5-1 defeat of Rangers at Pittodrie in January 1985 and, later that year, famously scored all four in a 4-1 home defeat of Celtic.
Aberdeen’s two main strikers, Sam Cosgrove and Curtis Main, have both netted three goals apiece this season.
Cosgrove missed the first three months of the campaign with a knee cartilage injury.
Main, who underwent knee surgery in the summer, also missed large swathes of the first half of the season.
But McDougall reckons the goals will come and said: “You just have to get that goal and confidence comes from that.
“For the first six games of my first season at the Dons, I didn’t score and I felt under pressure.
“Fergie took me into his office and said ‘don’t panic. A ball can hit your head and go in and then you’ll go on a run’. And I did go on a scoring run soon after. It can be the same for Cosgrove and Main.”