Mark McGhee promised Dundee touchline ban 'ways around' as Dens chief reveals James McPake exit was weeks in the making

Dundee feel there are "ways around" Mark McGhee 's touchline ban, as John Nelms reveals they'd been planning for weeks to replace James McPake.

The former Aberdeen and Motherwell boss was officially appointed on Thursday with the aim of saving the Dark Blues from Premiership relegation.

McGhee has 13 games to turn the ship around but won't be allowed on the touchline for six of those.

His final game at Motherwell saw him sent to the stand during a 7-2 defeat to Aberdeen, after which he launched an extraordinary verbal blast on fourth official John McKendrick.

The SFA opted not to ask FIFA to enforce that outside of Scotland so the entire sanction will have to be served before he can sit in the Dens Park dugout.

But Dundee are confident they can find a workaround as they try to climb the table.

Nelms said: "Mark has a touchline ban, everyone knows about that.

"We think there are ways around that.

“We think that is not going to hinder anything that we do on the park.

“We have, along with Mark, Simon Rusk coming along, and they’ll be working alongside Dave (Mackay).”

McGhee comes in to replace James McPake after he was fired despite winning his last two matches.

And Nelms explained that he and Gordon Strachan had been plotting a change in the dugout for several weeks.

The Dundee chief acknowledged: "We’re in a situation where we thought it was time for us to have a change.

“We thought we needed… we have a problem.

“We need to stay in the league, we want to stay in the league. We have to take a look at where we’re at.

“Do we think that we can do it the way we were doing it and be successful?

“We took that decision and said: ‘No, we don’t think we can do that’.

“Gordon and I started having conversations a few weeks