Moving to secure Tony Docherty on an improved contract is a smart move from Dundee.
That’s not something we’ve always said when it comes to decisions on managers at Dens Park.
In fact, it’s been quite a while since any Dundee manager was given a new contract by the club.
It’s been a tough gig for a long time – the last Dark Blues boss to avoid being sacked was in fact Jim Duffy way back in 1996.
He moved on by choice to take the reins at Hibs.
Since then every manager – including Duffy in his second spell as manager – has been shown the door by the owners of the time.
So this is something pretty new at Dens Park – managerial stability has not often been the case.
Now they’ve got that by setting a new deal in front of Tony Docherty.
Rolling
As has been the way of things at Dens for a while now, there is no final end point of the manager’s contract.
It is a rolling deal that renews each season.
The new contract hasn’t changed on that front.
What has changed is it is now more difficult for another club to come in and entice Docherty elsewhere.
And Docherty himself has more security in that it would be more costly now should the club decide to part ways.
I never had much of a problem with the decision to go with rolling contracts for managers.
Particularly because most of the time they’d had so much trouble finding the right one.
It reduced the risk for the club – if things didn’t work out, a change could be made without too much pain.
That literally happened just over a year ago when Gary Bowyer was handed an envelope with his jotters in it.
It spoke of a club that had learned lessons from bad managerial appointments (though it wasn’t that long ago they gave Mark McGhee the job).
Protection
The flip side to that coin, however, was that should they get the right man in then it would be much easier for another club to swoop in and take him.
There would be no big compensation needed to buy a manager out of a three-year contract or anything like that.
So there was a vulnerability there.
And I think that was keenly felt last season.
Even if there was no concrete link to the Aberdeen or Hibs jobs for Docherty, club chiefs would have been a little worried when jobs like that were needing filled.
Docherty had led the club to the top six and earned two Manager of the Year nominations.
After just one season, his CV looks pretty damn good.
And the deterrent for any club deciding it looked ideal for them wasn’t there.
It is now.
Dundee have moved to protect their asset.
In the process Docherty has strengthened his position.
It is win-win for everybody – hopefully that means Dundee fans can be celebrating wins and wins in the Premiership season to come.
And beyond.
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