So much for a quiet international week at Dens Park.
It’s been all go for Dundee fans, managing directors and, of course, 3D stadium artists.
It’s been all go because things aren’t well at the city’s oldest club.
People are right to point out that this sort of trouble only seems to appear when there is trouble for the team on the park.
But that’s often a convenient smokescreen.
Bad runs happen and, for a club like Dundee, relegation happens.
Even the youngest supporters will be fairly used to that.
Only seven times since the Premier Division started in 1975 have Dundee finished in the top six of the top division.
So relegation battles are par for the course for any Dee.
I’m not saying they need to like that state of affairs but they are used to them.
That’s why this is different.
What are the issues?
Major work is needed by the club to identify the issue and work to sort it out.
As a local reporter, I’ve been a bit of a man in the middle, speaking to both sides.
My job is to report what is being said, what is happening and from there Dundee fans can make up their own minds.
Dees can decide for themselves if they think the stadium is going to happen, how likely it is their team survive in the Premiership and whether Mark McGhee will be any good in charge.
From what I have seen, the main problems are two-fold – communication from club to supporters and picking the right managers.
On the manager front, since Paul Hartley led the side to the top six it’s been pretty much downhill from there.
James McPake arrested that and got the side back up last season.
Now we wait to see if McGhee can pull a rabbit out of the hat before the end of the campaign.
Communication
Communication certainly needs improved, though.
By that, I don’t mean lengthy grand interviews like we’ve had in the Courier this week.
Though they are welcome every now and then, what I suspect fans want more is to be drip-fed information about what is happening behind the scenes rather than this deluge.
To be fair to the club, they have said they are trying to improve things on that front.
In the interview, Nelms was happy to discuss everything put to him. In his sweltering office with the spring sun belting down on windows that won’t open, we were in there for over two hours.
As I’ve often found, in person he gives good, full answers.
But, once they are written down afterwards, the answers are far vaguer than they seemed at the time.
On the stadium front, it does feel like things are moving now, though. There’s more flesh to the bones but I’m still at the believe-it-when-I-see-it stage and 2024 really is not that far away.
On all the other stuff, aside from a pledge to get more information out to fans, there is a stubbornness to him that I don’t see changing any time soon.
Fan Q&As
I’m not a Dundee fan but my biggest issue with it all is the lack of AGM or open Q&A between fans and the club.
Sometimes these can descend into farce – I’m looking at you Falkirk – but I believe a football club should be open with its supporters.
Do that and they will feel like a real part of the club. That disconnect is mended.
Nelms says he does a Q&A every week with the Dundee Supporters Association.
That’s fine, the DSA do plenty of good work for their members.
But not every Dundee fan is a member.
I’ve never been part of a supporters group myself so, were I a Dee, I’d be cut out of that process immediately.
All sections of the support should have a voice.
This is a watershed moment for the relationship between the club and a big section of the fanbase.
Both sides want the same thing – a successful Dundee.
So, I say: get your heads together, talk through things in person and find a better way forward.
