HECTIC week.

My mate Tam has just survived a murder attempt by his herb-obsessed partner. He was pressed for thyme.

He survives but is determined to recuperate by flying off to a holiday on the condiment.

His period of relaxation, however, will not be shared by Allan Johnston, the Dunfermline manager, who has just let 18 players go.

A Pars supporter told me this week: "This is not so much a release but a mass prison break. Although, to be fair, the players were more guilty than the normal inmate."

The travails at Dunfermline not only testify to how far a great club has fallen: to be precise, seventh in League One, which, of course, is League Three.

But it also sheds a light on how the job of managers has changed as Scottish football scales down with all the abruptness of a draughtsman on speed.

Allan Johnston's recruitment budget might just be enough to fork out to Gary Lineker for saying on Match of the Day: "Good night." (Though that would be a price worth paying if it was a farewell rather than an au revoir).

So the Dunfermline manager will have to be resourceful in thinking and in practice as he seeks to bolster a squad from the leftovers of others and from other sources that will include Juniors and youth football.

The trials, even desperation, of trying to assemble a squad (the secret is a large Allen key and the enlistment of the mate who can do Ikea) is familiar to anyone who has dabbled in fitba' management.

I have always stepped away from such duties as if they were the accumulated leavings of a pack of obese St Bernards with gastro-intestinal problems.

I know that management is not just about picking a team, imposing strategy and then relaxing in the pub as the boys praise one's intellectual and motivational talents.

At the lower levels - and that is where Dunfermline are - it is first and foremost about getting a team on the park. Johnston, though, should be spared the humiliations dealt out to those who work at the very humblest level.

One Sunday league manager of my acquaintance spent his matchday mornings cruising an estate in a white van as if he was the football equivalent of a dogcatcher. As kick-off approached, he would lower his sights from the heady notions of finding his star striker and instead approach anyone who could walk.

The major revelation for him was that just because someone was on the Sunday streets in a tracksuit did not make him a footballer, though it was a reliable indicator that he could supply a variety of supplements - most of which were not performance-enhancing.

He was thus left in the dressing room before kick-off with a collection of characters who were so unsavoury they would not have been press-ganged for a treasure hunt on a 19th century sloop. Though, to be fair, most of them did have scurvy.

His problems are understood by anyone who takes it upon themselves to organise The Hunger Games, or the Works Five A Sides as they are officially called.

This all starts well with everyone pitching in for a laugh, a bit of fitness, the chance to decapitate the office/works tosser in an exuberant midfield joust. But slowly the numbers fall off. Like the process among German troops at Stalingrad, but with more violence, obviously. For example, the non-psychotic (aye, there is always one) decides that he wants to retain his ability to father children so opts not to place himself in the way of another Fives Tackle.

Others decide that running around a large cell is not going to lose them weight when counterbalanced by a post-match diet of six pints and a steak pie supper.

Most of the rest come to a moment of sanity when they accept that their lives are not enhanced by Fives but threatened by them and that they could usefully conduct the matter of existence without the constant attention of Big Jimmy and his size 11s that contain the power of an artillery division during the match and the lethal effect of chemical weapons when his battered boots are removed in the dressing room.

Thus the manager has to accept that his job of recruitment for Fives has a degree of difficulty only previously encountered by a leader of the Scottish Labour Party, though tragically there is no way out bar succumbing to ritual humiliation and resignation. And it is just as bad for the Fives manager.

This is an indication of the heavy burden that Johnston will face with his usual hard work and resourcefulness as the next season approaches with all the speed and threat of the office psychopath spotting a 50-50 with the guy who just turned down his request for a raise.

Johnston will thus face months on the phone or on the sidelines as he takes on the Lee Marvin role of recruiting a Dirty Dozen or, more likely, a Slightly Soiled Score or even one scorer.

He has my best wishes. My life has been peppered by such trials. And that without a herb-obsessed partner.