As the final whistle blew at Inverness on Saturday, I am sure that Richie Foran would have been devastated inside that his team had lost their fight for survival and dropped down into the Championship. They had finished the season strongly but had left it too late to go on the run they needed. But you know what, I am sure that tinged with the bitter disappointment, there might have been a little bit of relief that the nightmare was finally over.

I said at the start of the season that it was a monumental gamble for the Inverness board to give Foran the job of manager, with no previous managerial experience. It was an all-in on black, that landed on red.

For me, to get a manager’s job in the top flight of Scottish football, you need to have earned it. Either be a head coach of the reserve team at a club for a few years, or, even better, go away to the lower leagues as a manager, do well and work your way up.

He was still a player when he got the job. It was a mind-boggling decision. It is the same with Ian Cathro at Hearts. Yes, he has been an assistant coach at a high level, but it is completely different being a number one. He too looks out his depth I’m afraid. Go away and make all your mistakes at the lower levels, away from the glare of the public scrutiny and media spotlight.

Learn how to interact and manage players in good times or in times of crisis. Like Darren Young at Albion Rovers or Chris Aitken at Stranraer. Even a guy like Barry Ferguson went down to Clyde to start with.

Now I am not blaming Richie Foran one bit for taking the job. Every single player who has done their coaching badges and is coming to the end of their playing career would jump at a massive opportunity like that. But the board at Inverness have to be held accountable for dropping a young, untried manager into that environment.

I don’t know Richie personally, but I have really felt for him being thrust into the glare, and unravelling publicly like he has. From praising his team to the heavens early in the season, when they were not getting results, to accusing them of being bottlers and chucking it later on. He was nowhere ready for the job and it showed.

After the game on Saturday, he lamented his decision not to get rid of “two or three bad apples” in January. I am afraid that is on him. If he had identified players not pulling their weight or being disruptive in training, he should have binned them immediately, the first chance he had.

When a team is struggling and not getting results, the first thing a player does is blame the manager. Footballers, and I have been there myself, love an excuse when things are going wrong. It is never their fault. The training is rubbish, the tactics are barbaric, and the gaffer is useless. I think I even used the fact we used to shoot up the hill in the second half at Dens Park for my poor form! On the flip side, if you are winning games, the manager is the new Alex Ferguson.

I experienced the exact same thing at Dunfermline under Stephen Kenny. We went on a wonderful run, winning lots of games and only just went down. And we got to the Scottish Cup Final, losing narrowly to Celtic. He was lauded by all and sundry. We had dropped down into the Championship and were massive favourites to go straight back up. We had a top six Premiership squad on paper.

But football is played on grass. Having been brought in by Stephen and been given a new contract by him, I was 100% behind him. But we got off to a bad start, myself included, and I saw first-hand how a dressing room can quickly turn on a manager. That same group of players, who had run through brick walls for him previously, now questioned everything he did.

What was going? Why was he playing these tactics? Why is he playing this system? Why is he playing him? No wonder we can’t win a game’ Yes, those same systems and tactics we used last season. The majority in the dressing room stopped playing for him. Were they bad apples? Or was it players using the manager as the excuse for poor results? I knew he wouldn’t last long, and he didn’t.

In saying all this, it would now be criminal for Inverness to sack Foran. It would be crazy. Give him the chance now to show he has learned from everything he has gone through, not only on the pitch, but off it, in the board room, with the press, and especially, what you can and can’t say publicly about your players.

He will now be a far stronger and better manager for it. But maybe now, chairman and boards around the country will go for people who have earned their spurs in management before throwing them to the wolves at the top level in our game. The consequences of gambling can be brutal.