Scott Parker, Jack Ross and surviving without thriving

The Fiver wasn’t particularly shocked when Dundee United announced they’d defenestrated Jack Ross and thrown all his stuff into the Tay. True, his time in charge at Tannadice had started, exactly one month ago, with promise, as his 10-man team came within a minute of securing an opening-day league win at 1965 champions Kilmarnock, then went on to beat AZ Alkmaar 1-0 in Tin Pot. But things quickly spiralled out of control after that, United losing their next five straight, to the cumulative score of 24-1. Having been gubbed at home 3-0 by St Mirren and then 9-0 by the Queen’s Celtic, a quick extrapolation of the trend suggested Hibs would rack up 81 goals when they visit a week Saturday. That’s positively Sierra Leonean, and the end was inevitable, Ross’s 72-day reign falling just short of Jim McLean’s club record by 21 years, three months and six days. Oh Jack! We hardly knew ye!

Neither were we that surprised when news filtered through of Bournemouth bundling Scott Parker out of the window and flinging his gear in the Stour. True, his record at Dean Court has been on the face of it decent, winning promotion, albeit in spirit-sappingly dull style, then starting the new Premier League campaign by outsmarting Steven Gerrard, which is admittedly not the highest of bars, but he did clear it. However Bournemouth’s next three fixtures, in which they were widely expected to harvest zero points, harvested zero points. All well and good, though there are various ways of losing to the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, and plenty of them are a damn sight more palatable than doing so by the aggregate tune of 16-0. Oh Scotty!

Thing is, nine-goal shellackings, such as the one Bournemouth suffered at Anfield, aren’t, in