McCann gets his spade back out

Interim manager becomes permanent manager. What was all the fuss about?

As anybody who has paid the slightest bit of attention to this managerial saga at Dundee Football Club will appreciate, however, the beginning and the end doesn’t tell the story.

It’s been called a Neil McCann U-turn but there were probably actually two of the things because at the end of last week Dundee thought he was going to accept the job offer first time round.

And in among the McCann about-turns, there was a bit of a Jack Ross hokey-cokey as well.

As unconventional, and typically Dundee as this has all been, when the dust settles the only thing that matters is that McCann has made the right choice and so have the club.

For a man who has a burning desire to prove himself as a manager, a chance this high up the football ladder was never likely to come up again.

And he’s already shown enough to suggest that he’s going to be very good at it, too.

Don’t underestimate the task he pulled off in keeping Dundee up. This was a team heading out of the Premiership before he took over, and the horrible last two performances when they reverted to type showed just how impressive the three previous season-saving results had been.

McCann knows the strengths and weaknesses of this squad and will know the players he needs to replace.

Had it not been for the former Dens player taking the post on, or Jack Ross for that matter, the prospect of the hunt for a manager dragging on into another week was a pretty sobering one for the Dundee directors.

With a season of transition ahead for the club, developments spinning out of control could have had serious long-term ramifications.

McCann dug Dundee out of a hole a few weeks ago. He got his spade back out last night.