LEAGUE OF IRELAND PREMIER DIVISION: THE SCALE of the ongoing financial uncertainty at St Patrick's Athletic, and perhaps across the league more generally, became a little clearer yesterday as Pete Mahon was formally unveiled as the club's manager until the end of the season.

Just three of the Inchicore club’s players are contracted into next year but Mahon’s brief at Richmond Park will not extend beyond keeping the club in the top flight with everything relating to 2010, it seems, up for grabs in an end-of-season review.

Asked why Mahon, and his assistant John Gill, had not been given longer contracts with the club, its chief executive, Richard Sadlier, acknowledged that he was not really in a position to look beyond the next nine league games at this stage. “If I’d tried to talk to him about next year then the first thing he would have asked me about would be the budget and the structure of the club and that’s all to be decided when the season’s over,” said Sadlier.

“We don’t even know whether certain clubs will be in existence,” he continued. “From the discussions I’ve had with some of the others, and we’re fairly open with each other at this stage, it’s fairly worrying for a number of clubs.”

Both Sadlier and Mahon insist that they are happy to concentrate on preserving the club’s top flight status with the new manager stating yesterday that overhauling Galway United, currently five points ahead of the Dubliners in sixth place, is the primary target.

“It’s been a Jekyll and Hyde team so far this year,” he said, “and I said to them after watching the game in Derry last night ‘how could they play like that in Europe and then, with all respect to Galway, lose to Galway four times’. Anyway, I hope to get out there now on the training ground with John and encourage the positives while sorting out some of the mistakes and the first thing is to start winning our home games because it’s become a little too easy for other sides coming here lately.”

Mahon, who made the phone call to then manager John McDonnell that started the internal investigation that ended with Gary Dempsey’s suspension last season and who also dropped Alan Cawley for disciplinary reasons while in charge at UCD, said that he realised some of the players might not have been thrilled to hear the news of his appointment on Tuesday. “There will be people who will be aggrieved but they’ll get a chance to talk to me and hopefully they’ll be man enough to do that and put the whole thing to bed,” he said.

“You don’t sign players on the basis that they’ll approve of the manager,” added Sadlier.