During his eight years in charge Derek McInnes has tried various strategies to beat Celtic, generally with little success and rarely when the stakes were high.
During most of that time, he and his team would have been licking their lips at the prospect of a trip to face this Celtic team.
With nearest rivals, Hibs and Livingston having earned points last month at a venue which also produced out-of-the-ordinary wins for St Mirren and Ross County, some of the more confident and adventurous Aberdeen sides of recent times would have circled this on the calendar for a statement victory.
For this team, however, it hardly looked a likely prospect, and never after the deadlock was broken.
Celtic were no great shakes – the seven goals they have scored in six home matches this year is a number they would once have looked to accumulate in this 90 minutes alone – but like all the Dons’ previous five opponents they could be fairly comfortable that one strike of their own would suffice.
There could be no more wistful commentary on Aberdeen’s attacking paucity than that their desperate final fling to avoid six straight ducks was led by their goalkeeper, sent up for the set piece. Joe Lewis fared no better or worse than his outfield team-mates have since mid-January, and so history was made.
This is not the result or the performance which will symbolise a season of unacceptable stasis – to be blunt, they were little different from the Parkhead norm – but it is nonetheless poignant that the dearth for which it will be remembered exposed new depths at the very place where a more momentous drought ended.
Scarcely have those heady days of 2014 felt further away than they do now.