In football you very rarely get an ideal scenario and mine would have been to see Gordon Strachan at Dundee in some capacity.
Now that the club have moved rapidly to appoint Jim McIntyre, though, it is time for the fans to get behind the former Ross County manager.
Strachan walking the corridors of Dens Park would have been the perfect outcome for me after the departure of Neil McCann and his assistant Graham Gartland.
Maybe not as a manager in his own right but perhaps in a role that would see Strachan help a younger coach.
It would have been brilliant had Dundee been able to call on someone with his wealth of experience at domestic and international level, not to mention affection for the club where it all started for him as a player.
However, they are still getting someone who knows the job extremely well and has a track record at County, Queen of the South and Dunfermline.
This was certainly not the time for a rookie and with the appointment of McIntyre the club have appreciated that.
Now the new gaffer will have to get the best out of the players in a short space of time, with a trip to Livingston looming as soon as Saturday.
It is perhaps asking a lot of him as he will have limited time to get his ideas and tactics across but Dundee need wins and they need them quickly.
On reflection, I must say that I did find the timing of Neil’s exit a bit strange.
Why leave it until a few days before a massive match away to Livi when there has been an international break?
To give owners John Nelms and Tim Keyes the benefit of the doubt, maybe they just finally realised that it was time for a change.
Personally, I thought they should have acted after the home defeat to Hibs back on September 22.
There is just no getting away from the fact that regardless of how good a coach you think you are or what you have achieved in the game – and Neil has a playing record of which he can be extremely proud – bad results wear you down eventually.
You can highlight that penalty against Kilmarnock that should not have been or all the other occasions when the breaks haven’t gone Dundee’s way but if you have seven defeats out of eight league games and have gone out of the Betfred Cup at home to Ayr United then that’s asking for trouble.
~ I was a bit surprised to hear the talk of Scotland’s performance against Portugal being much improved and a lot better than the Israel match.
It would have been hard to be any worse than Haifa and there is a danger of reading too much into Sunday’s friendly.
We still lost 3-1 at home and our goal was a last-gasp consolation. Portugal had their reserve team on, really, so I’m not getting too excited about that display.
