Glasgow: Scottish Premiership strugglers Dundee have sacked manager Paul Hartley, the club announced on Monday.
Dundee have lost their last seven matches and are second-bottom of Scotland’s top flight, five points above basement club Inverness Caledonian Thistle with five games of the season remaining.
The bottom club at the end of the season will be relegated, with the second-bottom side entering a relegation play-off.
“I want to thank Paul for his time with the club,” said managing director John Nelms in a statement on Dundee’s website. “Unfortunately, the business we are in, sometimes change is necessary to achieve the goals we have set.
“I think somebody in the near future is going to get a good hard working manager.”
Dundee have won just eight of 33 league games so far this season. The Scottish Premiership is divided in two for the final few weeks of the campaign and Dundee’s first post-split fixture is at Motherwell, the team immediately above them, a week on Saturday.
Hartley arrived at Dens Park in February 2014 and took Dundee up from the Championship to the top flight in his first season.
The Tayside team’s statement added: “The club currently sit 11th in the Premiership table and the board of directors feel a change is needed ahead of five vital matches between now and the end of the season.”