IF IVANO Bonetti strolled into the Dens Park boardroom one of these days he might struggle to recognise the place. The geography and geometry of the famous old stadium may still be the same, but the lavish excesses present during the last days of the Bonetti empire have been superseded by an altogether more spartan regime. Relegated clubs laden with debt are usually about as easy to turn around as an oil tanker, but it has taken just two seasons for a streamlined Dundee side to start leaving most of the SFL in their slipstream again.

Whilst a dedicated young management team of Alex Rae and David Farrell have built a promotion-challenging team on the field, a combination of clever financial restructuring and a multi-million pound hit to former owners Peter and Jimmy Marr has seen debt - which once peaked at £23 million - cut to manageable levels. Dundee FC actually means three companies now, all with the same four-man board, comprising former Rangers and Whyte and Mackay boss Bob Brannan as chairman, chief executive David MacKinnon, supporters' trust representative George Knight and financial expert Ian Bodie.

One of these three firms services a £4m debt to the Bank of Scotland; the other retains the Dens Park property and also owes around £3m; leaving the third one to get on with the day-to-day running of the club. The only problem, and it can be a pretty major one at times like this, is that the agreement reached with the bank means the club itself has no overdraft facility. Raith Rovers are not the only Irn-Bru league team who have prudence as their watchword.

"Whilst we have created this structure which basically works very well for us," chief executive David MacKinnon said, "one of the problems we have got is cashflow. OK, so there is not one club in the Scottish First Division which doesn't have a cashflow problem but ours is compounded by the fact that part of the agreement with the bank is that we don't have an overdraft facility. So not for one day, or one minute of the year, can we go into our overdraft, because we just don't have that facility.

"Just as an example, we have one home game in February yesterday's league meeting with Morton and we will probably bank, after costs, only about £10,000 from that game. That doesn't cover much.

"We are very prudent but if we made a mistake in our forecasts, or we don't get money in that we are due, then potentially a cheque we have written might not be honoured by the bank. So what has happened is that directors have put their own money in at certain periods to ensure that every expense we have got is honoured."

Such funding arrangements were hardly aided by the continual delays to the club's Scottish Cup fifth round tie against Motherwell, even if Monday night's eventual triumph - leading to a tie against Queen of the South - opens up the prospect of a longer cup run. Yet it would take reaching a semi-final, or selling a player for in excess of £750,000, to trigger the necessity of paying extra money off against the debt.

But perhaps the best thing about the club's new organisational structure is that the fans are also in the driving seat. With the club no longer publicly owned, Dee4Life and another fans grouping now hold 29% of the club. Buyers are sought for the remaining 71%, but all four board members - including supporters' trust representative Knight - can veto any sale as well as any theoretical commercial interest in the Dens Park land.

"Some supporters have said Ah, but what if the property company wants to build houses on Dens Park',"

MacKinnon says. "But that can't happen because the four board members are the same for all three companies. It protects particularly the fans' interest. Unless the fans group said we want this person' it can't happen. Bob's dream is that the 71% is owned by 71 different people."

MacKinnon calls his own 18-month involvement in the club "a journey" and he is not wrong. He purchased a house in Inverclyde whilst still in his chief executive's role at Kilmarnock, only for his services to be sidelined after the arrival of chairman Michael Johnston, and now finds himself commuting for no fewer than five hours most days to fulfil his day job.

Employed on a consultant basis, due to pre-existing business interests in a sports scholarship and sports management company, his mileage is even greater on the days where he has to clinch signing targets. One such example came on transfer deadline day, when he was excused attendance at the club's AGM in order to pitch up at West Lothian - inspired by reading of Brian Clough's dogged pursuit of Willie McParland for Leeds United - to clinch the signing of in-demand Colin McMenamin.

"My area is looking after team matters and working very closely with Alex and David on who we can bring in and who we can't bring in," MacKinnon says. "I spoke to Colin during the day we agreed terms and he was keen to come. I phoned Bob, and said I think we've got him ... but I'm reading this Brian Clough book and I think I need to go to his house'. When I got to West Lothian the player said he had had managers on the phone offering me more money, but I want to go to the team that wins the league'."

MacKinnon is one of a rare breed of specialised, career chief executives in the Scottish game, even if the messy end to his Kilmarnock experience has left him reluctant to commit everything to just one club ever again. "I have got irons in the fire and plates in the air because after Kilmarnock one thing I vowed was that I wouldn't work for one employer again," he said. "At a club there can only be one chief and at Kilmarnock I didn't have the feathers.

"I have always said you need someone who has a foot in the boardroom and a foot in the dressingroom because there are two different mentalities. The dressingroom is short-termism - get a player in, lets win Saturday and not think about the consequences'. The board is very strategic, and we have to be that way, but I am equally aware that if you don't get it right on the park it doesn't matter what you do in the boardroom."

With Dens Park boasting a bigger "footprint" than Celtic Park, due to a greyhound track which is a remnant of the Ron Dixon era, putting up flats and redeveloping the South Enclosure remains a long-term ambition, but the priority is promotion to the SPL this season. "The fans have been superb and if we do pull it off our success will be dedicated to them," MacKinnon said.

Having been offered a job by Hamilton chairman Ronnie McDonald prior to joining Kilmarnock, MacKinnon also has an intimate knowlege of his competitiors. The contrast between the robust business models of both current challengers' and that of last season's First Division champions Gretna could hardly be greater.

Although he still has an inkling that St Johnstone will still have a role to play, MacKinnon's marketing mind is already whirring ahead to the last day - when Dundee are set to host Hamilton at Dens Park. "We've saved the Scottish Football League a fortune on a helicopter," he deadpans.