We had also lost Bett, Richardson and Mason at the same point or in the previous year. McLeish's last season, although we finished 2nd, we drew almost half of our matches (I think had we won three of them, we'd have won the league). We were nowhere near as impressive in that season as we were in the previous one and to an extent the writing was on the wall.
Of course, any team losing a player of McLeish's ability is going to suffer, especially when it leaves Irvine, Smith and Inglis as your centre halves. But as I said in another post the other day, replacing those midfielders with Kane, Heatherston, Mckinnon and Joe Miller was suicide. Basically the only midfielder left of the required standard was Brian Grant who was left with an absolute shit storm of work to get through because the other guys were simply gash.
And then picking Dodds ahead of any one of Shearer, Booth (when fit) or Jess really just isn't a good idea.