The first few days after the sacking of a manager are often an instructive exercise in hand-washing.
This week has seen those left behind at Pittodrie acting as quickly in distancing themselves from Jim Goodwin as he did in parting from his squad, sending the message that the baggage of responsibility borne by the former manager is very much weightier than that he carried in his ignominiously sharp exit across the Easter Road pitch.
In shipping out the side’s hand-picked captain, whoever is operating on behalf of – no laughing at the back – the Football Monitoring Board may merely have bowed to the inevitable but they have taken a conspicuous act to cut off the head of the snake.
It is an obvious means of advertising that the now-undeniable failures of recruitment lay not with the recruitment department but with successive team managers.
So too the inward business. The interregnum influx encompassing two central defenders, and a winger who likely enters the depth chart above two bought with actual money for a league campaign to which they have contributed zero combined starts, can clearly be seen as an attempt to correct – or at least publicly concede – the worst mistakes of last summer.
That none of the six players signed in January is currently committed for next season lays the foundation for the next coach to be the visible face of another extensive squad overhaul, however closely that may describe reality and whenever such person may arrive.
One may infer that won’t be soon; the sanctioned outside hire of an assistant for Barry Robson suggests this latest caretakership – and thus Dave Cormack’s third manager search in 23 months – is anticipated to last materially longer than those previous.
No bad thing. For there is no dubiety where the accountability for that recruitment rests.
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