Pep Guardiola declared his last trip to Dortmund as one of his best memories as Manchester City manager as the Blues finally broke through the barriers of three consecutive Champions League quarter-final exits.
Memories of this particular night at Signal Iduna Park will want to be forgotten quickly despite City securing the point they needed to confirm top spot for a sixth consecutive year. A tremendous achievement papers over an under-par performance that leaves questions about when several members of the team will and should start again.
City escaped with a 0-0 draw, shoring up sufficiently in the second half to avoid any complicated permutations that could have jeopardised their position as group winners and opened up a tougher draw for the second half. Even if it's the mark of a good team to get the results when not playing well, Guardiola will still want more.
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The evening started in strange fashion with Ederson dropped for arguably the first meaningful time in over five seasons at City, with Guardiola only offering that he preferred to start Stefan Ortega. Quite why he chose such a significant match to start Ortega - with the team vulnerable to surrendering the top spot that they crave so badly if they lost by certain scorelines - when he didn't even play him in the Community Shield seemed odd, although the former Bielefeld stopper was at least in the right place at the right time to stop the tame efforts that came in the direction of his goal.
That Ortega was the outstanding City player for much of the game said a lot about the overall team performance. When somebody as masterful on the football as Ilkay Gundogan lets the ball dribble backwards through his leg while he unsuccessfully stabs at it, you know it is an off night.
One childish match preview had risibly asked if the world would tire of Erling Haaland scoring goals, but what Guardiola would have done for their No.9 even to score a tap-in. Instead the Norwegian was culpable with the rest of his teammates in the first half, struggling to get on the ball and failing to do anything with it when he and they were found.
To say City dominated possession with over 70 per cent in the opening half, they were grateful to poor finishes from Karim Adeyemi, Gio Reyna and Youssoufa Moukoko to stop them going in at the break at least one goal down.
It was clear from the start that City wanted to push Joao Cancelo up and exploit the space behind Adeyemi on the left flank, but Dortmund - helped by a shocker of a performance from Cancelo - worked it to their advantage instead. Adeyemi streamed forward into the space that Cancelo should have been in on the numerous occasions City moves broke down and Dortmund will have been frustrated not to punish the visitors.
So bad was the 45 minutes that Guardiola made the drastic decision to haul off his two most used outfield players this season, sending Cancelo and Haaland to the bench. After his magic won City the game in the reverse meeting at the Etihad, this was anything but the homecoming he wanted at his former club.
Perhaps there was an element of saving legs for Leicester at the weekend but if so it goes against how Guardiola has treated the Champions League group stages every other year - remember RB Leipzig last season when the manager played a ludicrously strong team despite having already topped the group? The sight of Cancelo, Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, Jack Grealish and Ederson on the bench looked curious to say the least.
Still, the manager's changes looked to have paid off. Bernardo Silva instantly brought some more zip to the attack and Manu Akanji shored up the defence even if it put City in the unusual position of having four centre-backs in defence.
10 minutes into the second half, bright work from Bernardo down the left came first to Phil Foden in the box and then to Riyad Mahrez, who was clipped as he tried to cut in from his left. It was the lifeline City needed... except it wasn't because Mahrez promptly stepped up from the spot and missed again as Gregor Kobel guessed the right way.
Say what you like about Haaland's first half but there are no prizes for guessing who every Blue would have wanted to take that penalty. There are always going to be questions when a player who averaged a goal every 72 minutes for Dortmund in the Champions League and has started with a similar level of deadliness at City is not on the pitch.
The miss instead sent the noise levels at Signal Iduna soaring again as they took heart from their unexpected bonus. City had to pick themselves up again. To their credit, the Blues did pick themselves up again and were the dominant side as the game played out with the Dortmund threat entirely neutralised.
They were the better team in the second half and deserved their point even if they were still fortunate they never went behind in the game.
Guardiola and his players needed a point, and they got a point. Nobody will remember this game by the time the knockout rounds come around and the dead rubber against Sevilla next week could offer up opportunities to the likes of Rico Lewis and Josh Wilson-Esbrand - some freshness in the full-backs may be no bad thing.
Where they looked so imperious the last time they were here though - coming from behind with two second-half goals to complete a double over Dortmund and confirm themselves as the team to beat going into the last four of the Champions League - there aren't any potential last-16 opponents who would look solely at this performance and feel they had anything to fear.
City, of course, do not make a habit of being bad very often and will surely be one of the teams everyone wants to avoid when the draw for the knockouts is made. For Guardiola, however, he will want to see a marked improvement from his side when they pick this competition back up in the new year - whether Ederson starts or not.
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