The race to avoid the relegation play-off in the Scottish Premiership just got a whole lot more interesting.
All the talk of Aberdeen being sucked into the mire was justifiable following an 11-game winless run since the resumption of action following the winter break.
But the Dons showed some signs of fight under interim boss Peter Leven by ending that streak with a priceless three points at Motherwell on Saturday.
It was a huge victory too after Ross County recorded a terrific win of their own in beating Hearts in Dingwall.
That little bit of breathing space which clubs had thanks to the Staggies being cut adrift in the play-off position of 11th place has gone.
The Dons were nervously looking over their shoulders following their 1-0 defeat by Dundee at Dens Park on Wednesday.
Today they have company down near the bottom of the team after leapfrogging St Johnstone who are now just a point ahead of County.
Even Motherwell will be looking anxiously over their shoulder again with the gap between Stuart Kettlewell’s eighth-placed side and his former club County down to five points.
Should Peter Leven stay in charge of Aberdeen?
Credit where it’s due to Leven, who has taken on a thankless task not once but twice since stepping into the Dons dugout in 2024.
His first tenure was one game and he did terrifically well under the most taxing of circumstances against champions Celtic.
A battling 1-1 draw was excellent all things considered with the Dons doing so well they felt aggrieved not to take all three points.
But since then it has been one disappointment after another and by the time Leven was asked to return as interim boss after Neil Warnock’s departure last weekend the situation had deteriorated further from his first stint in charge.
The dire display at Dens Park in midweek reinforced that point.
There’s no way of sugar coating it, the performance was abysmal and the anger among supporters at full-time was understandable.
But Leven has done what Warnock struggled to do in taking the squad and helping them rectify their mistakes and produce a much-improved performance.
A first win and even more importantly a first clean sheet in the league since January 2 is worth celebrating given how bad it has been at Pittodrie in the last three months.
It also raises the question of whether Leven should be left alone to try and keep the Dons in the Premiership.
The search for a new Aberdeen boss is continuing and it would be better for the club in the longer term to have a new manager to be in place sooner rather than later.
But in terms of the here and now? That seems open to debate.
Throwing a new manager straight into the mix is a gamble
If the Dons go down the route of bringing in someone new to Scottish football then it would be quite the gamble to drop them into the dugout at Pittodrie for the next game against Ross County on March 30.
If Aberdeen can repeat the feat from Fir Park by picking up another huge win it would give them a six-point cushion on the Staggies with seven games remaining.
It does not bear thinking about what a defeat would mean. For a new manager it would mean instant pressure with a team they may not know an awful lot about.
In the high-stakes game of top-flight survival, being risk-averse may not be such a bad thing for Dons chairman Dave Cormack and his board of directors
By all means get the manager in but maybe a watching brief at the end of the month is the way to go.
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