Saturday’s defeat at St Mirren summed up Dundee’s season.
Relegation is pretty much a done deal now.
The most frustrating thing to me is since Mark McGhee’s appointment, the Dark Blues haven’t been really bad all that often.
They’ve just completely failed to take any opportunities laid out for them.
I’m not just talking about missing chances on the pitch, though that clearly would have helped!
But they’ve had so many must-win games now but seem to still have a chance afterwards.
Obviously, those have now run out but they’ll have been kicking themselves looking at St Johnstone’s results over the past wee while.
There have been multiple opportunities to prove they belong in the league.
All passed up.
And that tells you there’s a lack of quality through the squad.
It sounds bad but there’s a few in that squad not good enough for Premiership level.
They’ve been a ‘nearly’ team all season.
Good points in games but no actual points picked up.
Expectations
At the start of the season, I quite liked the look of their squad.
I thought they had enough to do well.
Bringing in Leigh Griffiths could have been a great signing but obviously didn’t work out in any way.
But there was Jason Cummings and Cillian Sheridan to back him up, neither worked either for different reasons.
After flying through the play-offs last season, all the signs were it would be a good season back in the Premiership.
Expectations were high but they’ve not been close to meeting them.
Now they have to lick their wounds and decide what happens for next season.
Who stays and who goes.
McGhee
Mark McGhee’s contract is up but I’m not convinced he’ll be leaving.
His relationship with Gordon Strachan might be enough for him to stick around in the job.
It will be a tough one to sell to the fans, of course.
Especially if he ends the season without a win to his name.
Supporters are screaming out for someone they can get behind to bring the club forward again.
But, I think they should be prepared in case it is Mark McGhee once more.
He’s been completely limited in what he could do with Dundee, coming in after the transfer window and will point to that in mitigation.
Charlie Adam
More interesting is what happens with Charlie Adam.
If he does leave, I hope he’ll not only be remembered for that mistake at St Mirren.
He’s shown much more class than that over his time at Dens.
For me, I think getting him into the coaching side of things would be a good way of keeping fans onside.
But they still have two games to go and, hopefully, they can show a bit of fight.
There’s a way to go down, the players need to show the fans they have given everything.
