As the Aberdeen team bus pulled away from Ibrox last night, the three-hour drive back up the road gave the players plenty of time and scope for reflection.
About an hour or so earlier, inside the away changing room, they had just been given their first dressing down under their new manager Stephen Robinson.
Kevin Nisbet, who captained the team on the night, described it as a ‘bollocking’. Never one to mince his words, Robinson can be brutally honest and blunt when the mood takes him.
The Aberdeen players got their first experience of that in only his second game in charge. It wasn’t difficult to envisage teacups flying around after the 4-1 defeat by Rangers.
‘I was very honest with the players in the dressing room after the game,’ said Robinson. ‘I told them the truth, delivered a few home truths.
‘Maybe if that had been done six or seven months ago, people would have stepped up. It’s frustrating. The reality is we’re in a dogfight.
Angry Aberdeen boss Stephen Robinson admits that his team are now in a fight for survival
Rangers’ Nico Raskin scores in a 4-1 victory that moved Aberdeen closer to the relegation zone
Rangers captain James Tavernier celebrates scoring a trademark free kick in stoppage time
‘Including myself, everybody has to stand up. We have to scrap and fight to get out of this. We have to stick together.
‘You can’t defend like that at Ibrox and expect to get a result. It’s not acceptable. Aberdeen Football Club has been very good to a lot of these players. It’s payback time now and I believe we’ll get that.’
Some may question the wisdom of Robinson slaughtering the players so early in his tenure, but what other options does he have? Aberdeen need a reaction – and they need it quickly.
When Robinson took charge just over a week ago, the club were eight points clear of the relegation play-off spot.
That was viewed as a decent enough buffer. With a manager of Robinson’s nous and experience at the helm, they would, in theory, have enough to pull clear of danger.
Yet, in the space of only a week, that eight-point gap has been largely wiped out. Aberdeen are now only three points clear of St Mirren and Kilmarnock, the two teams immediately below them.
The fact that Killie have won back-to-back games has changed the landscape at the bottom of the table in a big way. So, too, the fact that St Mirren won away at Falkirk yesterday.
All things told, it was a terrible weekend for Aberdeen. One of the biggest and most historic institutions in Scottish football, they are absolutely bang in trouble with only seven games to go.
When they return after the international break, their next match away at Robinson’s former club St Mirren now takes on monumental importance.
If Aberdeen were to lose that, the threat of relegation would loom ever larger. The trap door would open and threaten to swallow them up.
The whiff of Hibs in 2014 would grow stronger. That is the sort of vibes they are giving off at the moment. It is a truly desperate state of affairs. The dandy Dons are in dire straits.
There was a clear dig from Robinson aimed at the previous regime under Jimmy Thelin when he said that the players should have been told all of this months ago.
He was right. Aberdeen were on the slide for a long time under Thelin before they finally sacked him in early January.
The fact they then chose to dither for over two months with Peter Leven as interim manager, before pressing the panic button and appointing Robinson, has only worsened their plight.
As a club, Aberdeen have been sleepwalking for the past three months – and have eventually woken up slap-bang in the middle of a relegation battle.
The people responsible for that are chairman Dave Cormack, chief executive Alan Burrows, and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel.
It was their intention to allow Leven to remain in charge until the summer before making a new appointment, thus failing to grasp the gravity of the situation that was unfolding before them.
Robinson is a good manager and, given time, he will do a good job at Aberdeen. But he has one major problem on his hands.
This is not a squad built for a relegation battle. It is a squad built in the image of Thelin. The majority of players simply are not good enough.
How many of these players can Robinson really trust and hang his hat on over these final seven games? You would struggle to make a case for many more than about half a dozen or so at the very most.
There are very few who have the minerals for a relegation fight. As a club, Aberdeen have lost their identity and this current group of players are a gutless rabble.
Robinson spoke last week about the fact he will face a major rebuild in the summer. That’s another part of the problem in the sense that a lot of these players know they are leaving in the summer.
Come what may, they know their future lies away from Pittodrie next season. Whether or not the club is relegated is of no real consequence to them.
Watching the manner in which Aberdeen collapsed against Rangers, you started to wonder if Robinson’s rebuild will take place in the Championship rather than the top flight.
Aberdeen were solid enough for the first half-hour or so and frustrated Rangers by remaining compact and organised in their 3-5-2 shape.
But they just totally lost their way after going 2-0 down thanks to goals from Tochi Chukwuani and Mikey Moore. Even when the Dons pulled a goal back through Dennis Geiger, the comeback was never really on.
Rangers won with plenty to spare in the end as two more goals from Nico Raskin and James Tavernier, the latter of which was a terrific free-kick, put some gloss on the final scoreline.
The problem for Aberdeen was twofold. They fell apart far too easily after losing the opening goal, whilst offering no threat whatsoever at the top end of the pitch.
The goal they scored through Geiger came directly from a terrible mistake from Chukwuani after he lost the ball deep in his own half.
They created nothing under their own steam. Their season was never going to be defined by a result away at Ibrox, but the nature of the performance was alarming.
Robinson knows this cannot go on any longer. There is no time to beat around the bush. The players were told in no uncertain terms after the game what is required moving forward.
The trip to his old stomping ground in Paisley in a fortnight is now of seismic importance. Are Aberdeen too big to go down? No, absolutely not. On this evidence, they are too gutless to stay up.
