The stats show board felt they

THE statistics of Dundee’s horrific seven-game losing streak provide a telling insight into why the club’s owners felt they had to make yesterday’s decision to sack manager Paul Hartley.

The disastrous results since he picked up the manager-of-the-month award for an unbeaten February meant, even before the axe fell on the gaffer, the big question being asked by fans as the team plummeted down the Premiership over the past month-anda-half was where had it all gone wrong?

The worrying answer was pretty much everywhere. It’s been much simpler to say where things have gone right for the Dark Blues.

Answering that question is considerably less time consuming because, since the l osses began mounting up, precious little has gone to plan.

Almost the only bright spot in that run came when Faissal El Bakhtaoui smashed home a wonder strike in the 2-1 home defeat at the hands of Celtic.

In fairness, the performance that day was encouraging. The March 19 reversal was the third in a row but at least it saw the Dark Blues perform reasonably well and, after El Bakhtaoui’s effort, gave the Hoops a few anxious moments in the game’s closing stages.

Even so, Celtic were deserving winners that day and, with the exception of Ross County when they won via fortunate late penalty in Dingwall a fortnight ago, the same can be a said of the other teams who’ve beaten Dundee during what’s been the worst sequence of results for any Premiership outfit this term.

The statistics of the past seven weeks highlight that depressing fact.

These sorry seven games have seen Dundee manage to find the back of the net just twice in all, with skipper Darren O’Dea’s penalty against the Staggies being the only counter on top of the aforementioned El Bakhtaoui effort.

At the other end of the park, a morale-sapping 17 goals have been conceded, including a woeful seven in one game when Aberdeen visited Dens for Friday night football right at the end of last month. That was a heaviestever home loss to the Dons.

Further examination of the stats shows why too few goals are being scored and too many conceded.

Skipper Darren O’Dea was the last Dee to score a goal. Want-away Dundee keeper Scott Bain clutches a cross at Tynecastle as his