A MAN BURNED BY BAD DEALS
Hartley paid the price for replacing Stewart and Hemmings with motley crew of forwards who cannot score
THE ability to replenish and rebuild is an essential attribute at all levels of football, but for the batch of managers immersed in the perennial scrap to claim the middle ground in the Scottish Premiership, it is what comes to define them.
As Paul Hartley reflects on how a hitherto impressive six-year managerial career hit the buffers yesterday, he will need no one to tell him how big a part flawed recruitment played in his downfall from Dundee.
The departures of Greg Stewart and Kane Hemmings from Tayside last summer left him with a chasm rather than a gap to fill, but his attempts to compensate for the combined 36 goals he lost rather scuffed his reputation as one of the coming men of the management scene.
Striker Yordi Teijsse was recruited from Dutch Fourth Division side Quick Boys on a two-year contract having apparently been monitored by the Tayside club for a year.
It was quickly evident that this was no hidden gem, though. The words fish and water were immediately foremost in the thoughts of all who saw him.
Teijsse scored just once in 11 games prior to a loan move to German minnows Wuppertaler SV and few are anticipating a glorious second coming.
The name of Faissal El Bakhtaoui was more familiar to the Dark Blues faithful yet the former Dunfermline player fared only moderately better than the unfortunate Teijsse as he attempted to step up from League One to the Premiership.
His wonder strike against Celtic last month will doubtless get an honourable mention as a goal-of-the-season nominee. Three goals in 26 appearances, however, again spoke of an ill-founded faith in his ability.
Perhaps, with two talents such as Stewart and Hemmings moving on, Hartley felt compelled to gamble with such left-field options. To try to land the spectacular and carve out a return to the top-six. With hindsight, recruiting more familiar, proven names would at least have steadied the ship.
Marcus Haber arrived in October and has managed six goals. However, Henrik Ojamaa turned up on loan in January and is yet to score. While Hartley was right to underscore the size of the task in replacing Stewart and Hemmings, his attempt at doing so was at odds with the shrewd judgment he had repeatedly shown since starting out in management with Alloa in 2011.
As unfair as it may seem at times, at clubs like Dundee, the need to continually unearth nuggets of gold is simply part of the job description. Hartley began hitting only rock.
The curious case of Gary Harkins also did little to engender positivity among the squad or the fanbase ahead of what was always going to be a testing season.
The midfielder was never likely to win any sprinting contests, but such a fundamental flaw had not prevented a string of managers building their teams around him down the years.
Having signed him in 2014, Hartley was seemingly another admirer. Harkins made 31 appearances in his first season, 35 in his second and was scintillating the night early last May when Craig Wighton’s goal famously relegated city rivals Dundee United.
As popular a figure in the dressing room as he was with the Dens Park support, the sight of him being forced to train with the youth team before leaving for Ayr last summer was unseemly.
Word had it his enforced exile was down to financial reasons. Quite why his mercurial talent was seen as more dispensable than others remains a mystery, though.
Those sensing grim portents after two terms back in the top flight were proven to be correct. Despite being pitched in with East Fife, Dumbarton, Peterhead and Forfar, Dundee were eliminated at the group stage of the League Cup.
They rallied to win away to Ross County on the opening day of the Premiership season, only to go ten games without a victory.
Five wins in ten before the winter break lessened the will to bid good riddance to the old year.
The reinvention of one-time defender Mark O’Hara as an attacking midfielder played no small part in the turnaround. The emergence of Cammy Kerr and Daniel Higgins was also to Hartley’s credit. The top six seemed on.
But St Mirren’s victory at Dens in the Scottish Cup at the end of January rather put Hartley’s men back to square one.
“Unearthing nuggets of gold is part of the job”
By the end of February, the 40-year-old seemed to have ridden out the storm. His side were undefeated that month — victory at home to Rangers came before a 5-1 thrashing of Motherwell at Fir Park.
As he showed off the manager of the month awards to the cameras, little did anyone know that he had already taken the last point of his three-year tenure.
Narrow losses to Partick Thistle, St Johnstone and Celtic did not come without some positives.
But when Aberdeen put seven past his side at the end of March — their worst result since 1971 — he was living on borrowed time.
They lost 2-1 in Dingwall and by a solitary goal at Tynecastle. Hartley said the turning of the corner would come. But the confidence crisis in the dressing room was by now rife. Goalkeeper Scott Bain seemed to have completely lost his nerve. Hartley tinkered with formations and personnel.
Hamilton on Saturday was the point of no return. Without an away win in the league all season, Hartley’s first club coasted to a two-goal win to leave Dundee facing the very real prospect of the play-offs — perhaps even against their city rivals.
When word of a board meeting to discuss his future leaked out yesterday morning, his fate already seemed sealed by seven straight defeats.
As fine a job as he had done at both Alloa and Dundee up until last summer, the here and now was indefensible. For Hartley and his ilk, the past is always a foreign country.