When the going gets tough, strong clubs tend to back their plan and their people. Melbourne did neither by responding to their humiliating 186-point loss to Geelong by sacking Dean Bailey. Exposed and embarrassed, the Demons chose to pronounce Bailey as their scapegoat.

Instead of addressing the real problems within the club, they chose to remove the coach that three days ago they were reportedly willing to give a one-year extension to.

It’s a disgrace. No coach deserves to be sacked because of one bad season, let alone one bad game.

But this just goes to show that Melbourne as a club have a long way to go before they can be considered among the league’s best. There are a myriad of reasons why the past few days have reflected really poorly on the Melbourne Football Club.

A gross misjudgement of expectations

Every club says at the start of the year they expect to improve on the previous season. Every single one. Typically, though, less than half actually get their wish – it’s the nature of the business and sometimes clubs have no other option than to tolerate it.

For example, Mark Thompson had a total of four seasons at Geelong where the team underperformed compared to the previous year before he guided them to the 2007 premiership.

Judging by yesterday’s announcement, if he was coach at Melbourne he probably would’ve been sacked after the first such season. After all, Bailey (when you take out his first season at the club) has never once had a season that wasn’t an improvement on the previous one.

Funnily enough, this year was probably going to be no different. With the final three games of the season against Richmond, Gold Coast and Port Adelaide, the Dees were – and are – on track to clearly surpass last season in terms of wins and finishing position.

Coaches of clubs that consistently go backwards, or go backwards then stagnate, deserve scrutiny.

But to expect constant improvement from year to year is a ridiculous task to set a coach. It just isn’t possible to improve every year – yet somehow Bailey’s expected to do just that, and then some.

With such bizarre expectations, Bailey never stood a chance.

How easily one afternoon was able to alter the direction of the club

Then again, maybe it wasn’t the season that cost the coach’s career, but rather the game. If reports relating to a one-year contract extension last week were true, then the 186-point loss must have been an overwhelmingly huge factor in the board’s decision.

Once again, though, you can’t help but reach the same conclusion: Bailey was simply doing his job.

Robert Walls made the point on Ten’s One Week at a Time last night that the coach could’ve put 18 men behind the ball over the weekend and maybe the losing margin would’ve been a more respectable 90 or 100 points – but the players would’ve got nothing out of the game.

If the club hadn’t suffered the second-worst loss in VFL/AFL history, the board would’ve felt far less compelled to take action. However, the opportunity for the team’s young players to learn valuable lessons would have been lost.

You never see Guy McKenna put extra Gold Coast players behind the ball, and there’s a very good reason for it.

The other problem with focussing so heavily on this one game is that to do so gives very little credit to the opposition (something the media have been guilty of as well). Fact is, the Dees ran into a proud Geelong side returning to their home ground after a month of below-par performances.

They came out in the manner their credentials said they should. The Dees were unlucky to be on the receiving end.

Even after you consider all that, the fact it took the events of one afternoon for Melbourne to go from a one-year contract extension to a sacking does not reflect well on the club and its belief in where it’s headed.

What’s worse is the fact CEO Cameron Schwab was from all reports on the chopping block last week and is now in the job for another year.

Last week he was the problem. Now he’s the solution. Figure that one out.

Tanking and the promotion of a losing culture

The bombshell that Bailey dropped in his final press conference was that he “had no hesitation at all in the first two years (of his coaching stint) in ensuring the club was well placed for draft picks”.

He continued: “I was asked to do the best thing by the Melbourne Football Club and I did it. I put players in different positions.”

What Bailey did not say, however, was the T-word – tanking.

But from what he did say we can gather that those in power at the Demons pressured their coach into setting up in a way that was less conducive to winning and that the purpose of this was to lose enough games to get a priority pick.

There’s an obvious risk when it comes to running your club this way, and that’s the fact it doesn’t promote a winning culture.

If what Bailey said is correct, it’s fair to say for two years winning was not the number one priority at the Demons. It makes you wonder why the club would be so surprised at the team’s inconsistency in the two years since.

At the end of the day, though, Bailey’s comments yesterday does make it easier to swallow Tom Scully leaving for GWS. Scully was, of course, taken with the priority pick Melbourne gained at the end of 2009.

The contradictions

Melbourne have been exposed these past few days, exposed for trying to have their cake and eat it too.

They want a team of predominantly young players and even go as far as getting rid of Cam Bruce and James McDonald. Yet they also expect to be playing finals.

They want their coach to develop these young players to be the best possible footballers they can be. Yet they punish him when this leads to less than desirable results.

They expect to have as smooth a ride from bottom four to top eight as sides like Carlton. Yet they don’t have a Chris Judd or a Brendan Fevola (who kicked a total of 188 goals in 2008-2009).

They identify an issue with Cameron Schwab being CEO and, albeit unofficially, decide his time is up. Yet when the club’s issues are put in the spotlight all of the sudden he’s worthy of another 12 months.

They cry foul and expect additional compensation when GWS use AFL rules to chase after Tom Scully. Yet they were happy to take advantage of AFL rules themselves to get Scully in the first place.

The past few days have shown that the Melbourne Football Club have a long way to go, on and off the field.