Why I’m the bad voted same way

“The way that was handled was not business-like and was very poor.

“It has caused a lot of bad blood throughout the league the way that was done, taking private messages and putting them out there.

“Of course, they have been taken out of context at some levels because you don’t know exactly what was going on and what the conversations were. There were a lot of conversations going on at that time, loads of them, so you don’t get the full context of it but you do get one view and that’s what they wanted.”

Dundee fans were concerned the club did not gain much by switching votes, Nelms though says reconstruction will see the club in a better place, even if it might not be straight away.

On the initial vote, he said: “From the beginning, I didn’t want anything to go out that would hurt anybody at all.

“We had very limited time to look at things, the document itself didn’t give much hope for reconstruction and didn’t do a lot of things.

“For me, I wasn’t just thinking of Dundee Football Club but other clubs who would be hurt in all of this. That was my main focus, I didn’t want anybody to get hurt.

“The change came, after a lot of conversations with a lot of clubs, and the appetite for reconstruction was greater than I first thought.”

On Dundee, he added: “We were in the worst position possible – we were in third place, there’s not much benefit one way or the other that we could get out of this.

“When people ask me that – I ask what do you think we could we have gotten out of this?

“So, the best thing we could possibly get out of this is a proper conversation about reconstruction.

“That might not benefit in the short-term but, in the long-term, it would benefit Dundee FC and all of Scottish football.

“That, for me, was the best thing we could get out of this.

“Does that do anything for us right now? No. But we need to look at it in a much bigger, broader picture as opposed to ‘what does it do for me right now’?”

FOR a full transcript of the lengthy interview with John Nelms, head to thetele.co.uk

the piece after an SPFL vote saw the three lower tiers of Scottish football brought to an end.