Dundee United are re-writing the book on how to get relegated.
Just when you think everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, along comes the chairman to say that the summer recruits have got the club into the cavernous hole they find themselves in.
He may well be right that the close-season transfer window had done more harm to United than the infamous January one of last year.
The timing of his midweek interviews though, is mystifying.
Fair enough to rake over where it has all gone wrong when relegation is a certainty.
But not when hope is yet to be extinguished.
Only Stephen Thompson will know what purpose he thought it would serve to possibly antagonise some of his own players players who will still be needed to dig United out of that cavernous hole.
Maybe the chairman has been the first to get to the psychologist Mixu Paatelainen was talking about introducing his players to, and they’ve come up with a plan to galvanise a “we’ll show him” siege mentality.
So far so good they won on Saturday.
And maybe Thompson should also be given the benefit of the doubt with his pronouncement that “our recruitment last summer was poor at best and that’s why we are where we are.”
Perhaps the word “our” means he is admitting to some culpability, and not pinning all the blame on Jackie McNamara and his backroom team.
Because that blame does need to be shared.
When Paatelainen was appointed Thompson made it clear that the changing of his job title from manager to head coach was only semantics.
“There’s a head coach, a general manager in David Southern and myself overseeing everything. It’s just a modern way of doing things but it’s no real change.”
So if the summer signings were duds and undoubtedly some of them were where were the checks and balances? Who was “overseeing everything?”
With a hands-on chairman and an experienced general manager, who was in McNamara’s ear at the end of last season to question the lack of early transfer business? Who was querying the career downward spirals of the drifters turned marquee signings Rodney Sneijder and Darko Bodul? And who was saying: “Would it not be a good idea if we went into the season with an experienced goalkeeper?”
Mistakes continue to be made at a club that not so long ago seemed to be error-free.
The summer recruitment, and whoever is responsible for it, will be near the top of the list if a Dundee United Premiership demise is documented in a few months.
But their chairman shining a light on the quality of players who will be needed if that demise is to be averted will merit a mention as well.