GEORGE CRAN: Dundee turned down by yet another manager – where do they go from here?

Dundee’s search for a new manager is back to square one.

Callum Davidson was the man they wanted to take over from Gary Bowyer after he was shown the door last week.

And they thought they had him, only for the former St Johnstone boss to have a change of heart overnight.

So where do they go from here?

The Dark Blues aren’t short of applications, but the managers John Nelms and Gordon Strachan specifically target keep saying no.

Davidson now joins Jack Ross and Shaun Maloney in getting right down to the nitty gritty of final negotiations, only to decide the job wasn’t for them.

That’s just in the past year.

Is Dundee a desirable job?

This summer feels like it is set for Dundee déjà vu all over again as the Dark Blues move from one favoured target to another, only to fall short of the candidate’s expectations.

I’m not sure there’s any other way to put it than that. And I truly hope that’s not what the next few weeks hold.

Dundee should be a desirable job. It is obviously desirable enough for these top coaches to get into serious negotiations for it.

But something keeps putting them off.

Is it as basic as money? It could be. The Dark Blues don’t throw around the kind of cash they used to, belts have definitely been tightened over the years.

Is it the setup behind the scenes? Work has been done since Gordon Strachan’s arrival to modernise the structure of the first-team setup.

But now the club’s first ever head of recruitment is gone as well, with Gary Ogilvie choosing to leave the club in the wake of Bowyer’s sacking.

As a facility to work in, the club’s base at Gardyne Campus is night and day from Dens Park.

But the training pitches have been an issue for some time, enough to cause friction between Bowyer and his boss Nelms, as Courier Sport revealed last week.

Has the treatment of Bowyer and his staff and the lack of flexibility in bringing in new players added to the general feel of a difficult job?

Money

No doubt expectations are high from the Dundee hierarchy, certainly higher than going back to the Championship in a year’s time.

But is that expectation married up with the finance to get it done?

Bowyer himself wasted no time in talking about how much investment would be needed to compete in the Premiership next season, talking about it on the pitch at Ochilview in the midst of celebrations with the Championship trophy.

Are these managers seeing the budget proposed, then seeing the expectation of the club and deciding they don’t match up?

There are so many questions and I’m not sure any of them individually are reasons for people saying no to Dundee.

Rather a mixture of them all, small issues adding up to an unease that sees them turn their attentions elsewhere.

Ross went to United in the Premiership, Maloney to Wigan Athletic in the English Championship and Davidson may have something else on the horizon.

Gary Bowyer

Despite last season’s travails with managerial candidates, they did get Gary Bowyer in the building.

And he did the job set out at the start of the season by returning the club to the top flight.

He was a manager very much looking for a new experience, trying out Scottish football after a career down south and it turned out to be a successful partnership. On the pitch, anyway.

At the time, Dundee’s decision to dispense with the services of the newly-crowned Manager of the Year immediately after he received the award was strange to say the least.

Now it just looks daft.

Dundee now have no manager, no players and no head of recruitment.

John Nelms and Gordon Strachan have got themselves into a real mess.

Where do they go from here?