Dundee boss Jim McIntyre defiantly insists he will be in charge at Dens next season, no matter what league the team are playing in.
The Dark Blues’ Premiership status is hanging by a thread with Saturday’s last-gasp defeat at Motherwell consigning the club to their ninth straight defeat.
Bottom-of-the-table Dundee are now seven points behind St Mirren in 11th with just three games of the season remaining.
When McIntyre took over from previous boss Neil McCann in October, he performed radical surgery on the squad with a whole raft of arrivals and departures.
The current Dens manager insists his new-look team have not picked up the points their performances have deserved but ultimately he knows the buck stops with him.
However, despite the desperately-disappointing recent results that have left the club on the brink of relegation to the Championship, he retains faith in himself and his ability to bring success to Dundee.
When asked if he still expected to be at Dens next season, the manager said: “Of course I do.
“The people at the club know what we have done and had to do behind the scenes in terms of the squad.
“So from that side of things, when you are making so many signings in January and getting rid of a lot of players, it is because the recruitment side hasn’t worked and the results were there for everybody to see.
“So you have to be brave and make a change to try to improve things.
“Unfortunately for us, results haven’t matched some of our performances and we haven’t picked up results. That’s on me.”
McIntyre admitted he had not spoken to Dundee managing director John Nelms about the current precarious situation or his own future.
McIntyre said “No, we have been concentrating all our efforts on trying to make sure we stay in the league.
“The whole focus has been on that.”
Following the 4-3 defeat at Fir Park, Dundee know the only slim chance they have of staying up is if they win their remaining matches, starting with Hamilton at Dens on Saturday.
McIntyre said: “We are in a perilous place and we know we need to win all three games.
“That is going to be tough, there is no doubt about that.
“But the mindset is the same as the week before, we have to make sure we do our bit and win the game.
“There were a lot of positives from Saturday in terms of we got back to scoring goals and we hit the post twice.
“We also had two counter-attacks that we had to convert into goals as well.
“So we certainly did the right things by getting the goals but again defensive frailties have cost us – not marking our man in the box, not picking up and being tighter – and Motherwell punished us.”
McIntyre bemoaned a lack of luck against the Steelmen but candidly confessed that Dundee only had themselves to blame for the loss.
He said: “There are two sides to it.
“You look at the chances we create . . . obviously the first goal, a deflection from a shot outside the box but we should still close the ball down quicker.
“Sometimes those wee things go against you and unfortunately for us we didn’t have that wee bit of Lady Luck.
“Having said that, coming away from Motherwell and scoring three goals, we have to be winning that game and that’s our own fault, nobody else’s.
“But as I said before, you can bemoan mistakes, decision-making at times but you can’t say that the boys are not putting a shift in, they certainly are.
“I really felt for them on Saturday night because they put so much effort into the game and to lose it the way we did, I felt we didn’t deserve that.”
Saturday’s result and the manner of the defeat were obviously a huge hammer blow to his players but McIntyre insisted they can bounce back for Saturday’s must-win game against Hamilton.
He said: “There is nothing better than getting back on the training ground when you have had a sore result.
“It is just a case of getting the heads lifted again and getting the proper preparation done for this week.
“We are in the last-chance saloon and even that might not be enough depending on what happens elsewhere.
“So we have to make sure again that we do our bit.
“But we need favours now – we know that.”
