Jim McIntyre was last week appointed as the new manager at my old club Dundee. Macca will have been delighted to have got back in after spending almost a year on the outside looking in after leaving a pretty successful spell at Ross County. But he got his Dundee tenure off to the worst possible start with a 4-0 trouncing at Livingston on Saturday. As always the first thing any new manager does is he brings in his own trusted backroom staff. Guys who he has worked with before in the heat of battle and trusts implicitly.

Billy Dodds was at Jim’s side at Ross County and is clearly the man he wants to bring in to help him at Dens Park. And help is definitely needed, as make no mistake Dundee are in huge trouble at the bottom of the Premiership. The backlash from the Dee fans over appointing Billy, particularly on the battle ground that is social media, has been incredible. This is due to the way he left Dundee back in 2011 when the club went into administration and nearly folded altogether.

Now I can see it from both sides, but unfortunately the majority of the Dundee fans just can’t. Firstly I must say that Dundee have some of the most loyal supporters in the country. The Dee4Life group have basically saved the club twice now. They didn’t leave it to some rich benefactor or long-distance Dundee fan with dough to ride to the rescue. They went out and did it themselves through sheer hard work. Going out collecting money with buckets to games, raising money through charity events and much, much more. The depth of feeling they have with their club runs deep and if any fans are entitled to have a say or an opinion on who runs the club it’s the Dundee fans. They have earned it through the amazing work done to save that football club.

In 2011 when Dundee went into administration the people to blame and point the fingers at were Calum Melville and the board of directors at Dundee. In particular, Melville, who was worth an estimated £100m, who bowled into Dens Park like Billy Big Time and was going to spend lots of his money to get Dundee back to the top of Scottish football. He recruited and signed off the cheques to assemble a strong squad of players and coaching staff including Billy Dodds. Dodds in particular left a very good job at the BBC to come to Dundee. He signed his Dundee contract in good faith. When the bubble burst and Melville decided he was bored of his new toy it was the players and the staff at the club who got royally shafted. Gordon Chisholm and Billy Dodds got sacked by the administrator with no chance of seeing their money.

What happened next is hazy with allegations that Dodds wanted to put the club out of business out of spite for what happened to him by voting against the CVA. I genuinely don’t believe that for one minute he wanted Dundee to go bust but others will argue that he did. What I do believe is back in 2011, Dodds, the players and staff all got shafted by Dundee FC. Through the mismanagement of the club and blase attitude of Melville, people at that club lost a lot of money. Contracts that should have been honoured got ripped up and stuck in the bin. Footballers and coaches have got bills to pay and families to feed the same as the punters in the stand.

Now we have a situation with the club again in dire need at the bottom of the table and relegation staring them in the face that they need those same fans to rally around the club again. Not, fortunately, off the park in financial terms, but support for them on the park and in the dugout. McIntyre needs help in the dugout and he wants Dodds to give him it. They are a team. The only thing stopping him doing that is the fans' ire still towards Billy. But they now have a decision to make.

Do the Dundee fans so entrenched in their dislike for Dodds continue the ‘if he sets foot back in Dens Park I won’t be back’ chain of thought and force their manager to go and get someone else in? Which in turn could directly hinder their chances of survival? Or do they soften that attitude, give Billy a second chance, and appreciate that the real baddies in all this walked quietly out of the back door into the sunset never to be seen again, leaving behind a trail of heartbreak and destruction.

The Dundee fans need to rally in a different way now to support their beloved club. They need to trust the manager to bring in people he feels can help get them get out of bother. It’s going to need everyone to pull together. And that includes Billy Dodds.

And another thing

Celtic followed up their demolition of St Johnstone by sticking another four goals past a good Hibs side. They looked wobbly but a mixture of players clicking back to form and pundits playing for other teams writing them off has created a siege mentality which has kicked Celtic into another gear. The form they are now in is ominous for the rest of the league.