Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Talking to club’s Dens Park chief
go with it. I’m not sure if it is there. Now is the time, he needs the people’s help now.
“Maybe invite the leaders of the fan groups to one table and ask ‘what can we do together to safeguard the club?’
“From my point of view, if he wants someone to help bring those people to the table, I’ll happily do it for him for nothing. Just to help. I’m not interested in a position or a blazer or anything else.
“I think they can use the Covid situation as an opportunity to do that.
“The DSA, DFCSS, people like Ross Day and Scott Roberts who started the 1893 Foundation, they need to invite all these groups together and have a discussion, even if they don’t particularly want to be in the same room together. The thing they all have is they all support Dundee.
“I think John Nelms would do himself a power of good, not just meeting the representatives of the DSA or DFCSS, but have town hall meetings with the fans, tell them your plans and get them on your side and actually hear their stories and understand from them what supporting their team means.
“If a guy is getting £400 a week and spends £50 of that to go to Dens with his kids, he deserves the respect to talk to him and find out how things can be made better for him.
“I feel John probably doesn’t have the right people around him to say ‘come to Whitfield, have a chat with people’.
“I think actually talking with those sorts of guys would be really helpful for John, I just don’t think he really wants to do that.
“We are losing the connection we had with the club and the board and manager. The club has to fight to maintain that and he doesn’t.”
MacLean added: “Not having a relationship with Dundee fans is a major problem for the person in charge of Dundee Football Club.
“My biggest advice to him is he needs to talk to Dundee fans because he needs them now and, in a way, they need him. They need him to talk to them and be visibly on their side.
“With the players and management taking a cut, the manager joining the 1893 Foundation, they have a base to build from but it’ll get blown away if John doesn’t talk.”