High time to fill this void to forestall anymore negativity

We’re getting to the point where it’s quite legitimate to ask what the hell is going on at Dundee?

The Dark Blues are now three weeks without a manager.

And there’s no immediate sign of one arriving.

The club can point to Gordon Strachan’s beefed up role with first-team affairs as evidence they don’t necessarily need a man in place right now.

But the uncertainty only lets questions linger and doubts grow.

What actually is Strachan’s job now?

We have yet to hear about the nitty-gritty of Strachan’s first-team involvement but generally a director of football sorts out recruitment and gets all the managery things sorted so the head coach can just coach.

He brings in the type of players the coach needs and then the coach works them into a team.

For a long-term plan at a club like Dundee, it’s a good move in my book. When you sack a manager, as the Dark Blues have been known to do, you don’t just rip up everything and start again.

You find another coach who fits in with the plans already in place and that brings much more stability over the long term.

That’s all well and good but nobody from the club has come out yet and actually explained all that or explained why they are fairly happy to take their time over the big Dens vacancy.

When there’s a void, people fill it and not usually with positivity.

There’s also the prospect of convincing a manager to come in, knowing full well he wasn’t first choice. Or second choice, for that matter.

Jack Ross is out of the picture and now they are looking elsewhere after talks with Shaun Maloney dragged on too long.

If there were reservations from either side – there were on both – then it’s time to move on.

Though he was very harshly treated at Hibs, early signs were not positive at Easter Road, so maybe it’s a good thing Dundee are looking elsewhere.

But this all needs sorted out and sorted out quickly.

Fans are rightly looking for answers from their club.

Season tickets are on sale but if you don’t know what you are going to be seeing next season then why shell out £350 in this financial climate? Fair play to the 1,300 who have already, I must say.

And what about the players?

Dundee have a very decent squad for a Championship season but right now they don’t know who their boss will be when they return for pre-season.

Will they fit in with the coach’s plans? Will they be moving on if he doesn’t fancy them?

Now there is less than a fortnight before the playing squad come off their holidays.

And they are spending their last couple of weeks of rest with doubts over what’s happening at the club.

There is being patient and there is being relaxed, but there comes a point where you really have to pull the finger out.

That has to happen soon or Dundee’s post-relegation purgatory will linger and linger.

It could bleed into the new campaign and that’s the last thing this club needs right now.

Chairman Tim Keyes and managing director John Nelms.

Sean Maloney.