Livingston fans, I think, would buy quite easily into the idea that lightning strikes twice. Extreme financial mismanagement led them into administration in 2004, but the impotent leaders of the Scottish game allowed them to get back on their feet with their SPL status intact, though without several players and staff who were made redundant. You would have thought the club might have learnt from the mistakes...yet they lurched down the same road last summer and, at last, were given due punishment - a humiliating relegation to the third division.
The parallels with Dundee FC are scary. An SPL club when they too went into administration in 2003, the Dens Park side had amassed an extraordinary £23 million of debt with a bizarre transfer policy involving the purchase of big name veterans such as Craig Burley, Temuri Ketsbaia and Fabrizio Ravanelli, as well as a shedload of random foreigners on big wages. They survived only after philanthropy from fans and local business folk that would cheer Bob Geldof's heart; somehow, they avoided liquidation, although also at the expense of the jobs of numerous people, many of whom were doing normal jobs for normal (i.e. non-footballer) wage packets. A lot of people suffer when a top division team can't pay the bills, but not that many of them are players.
Dundee fans won a lot of respect for their tireless work to keep their club afloat seven years ago...and lost some of it when it became clear last season that they intended to spend their way to promotion back to the SPL. The £350,000 total outlay on Gary Harkins and Leigh Griffiths seems simply scandalous now, considering the tax bill that the club owe and their failure to pay wages this week. Is Calum Melville, their main "benefactor", given his financial advice by Fred Goodwin?
There will be plenty of upset and fear around the club, but the off-field fiasco might yet be a boon for one man - beleaguered manager Gordon Chisholm. Chisholm left Queen of the South to replace Jocky Scott in March, just when the wheels had completely fallen off Dundee's title challenge. His record in nineteen competitive games so far reads as 6 wins, 6 draws and 7 losses, including cup exits to Stenhousemuir and Brechin this season. Whilst not bankrolled to the same dramatic extent as his predecessor, Chis was given plenty of scoof to overhaul the playing squad and this blog had them as obvious favourites to win the division this season (not that I've ever been wrong before or anything...).
At the time of writing, Dundee are seventh, ten points adrift already of Dunfermline. It has to be said that Jocky Scott was chucked for less than this.
But the Dark Blue half of the City of Discovery has enough to worry about financially at the moment; the price of paying off the contracts of Chisholm (and assistant Billy Dodds) is one to be baulked at, at this moment in time. The longer the turmoil in the backroom persists, the longer he might avoid the heat...though, I suppose there's no guarantee he will get his wages any sooner than anyone else.
Note this - some folk obviously haven't learned from the punishment inflicted on Livingston. If Dundee do end up in administration, consistency demands that they too get relegated to division three. On the bright side for them, it does at least mean local derbies come back - with Montrose and Arbroath, that is.
L.
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