Mark Neeld has been dumped as Melbourne coach halfway through his three-year term but the Demons say that alone will not solve their problems.

Neeld was dumped on Friday after coaching just five wins in his 33 games and leading the club to a series of humiliating heavy defeats this season.

Neil Craig – who was head coach at Adelaide for 166 games before leaving the Crows late in the 2011 season – will take over as interim Melbourne coach until the end of the current campaign.

But the Demons are expected to look elsewhere for an experienced permanent replacement.

Mark Williams, Rodney Eade and Paul Roos are among those likely to be sounded out, along with John Worsfold, if he and West Coast part ways at the end of the season.

Josh Mahoney will fill the newly-created position of general manager of football operations for the rest of the season.

The Demons also forecast several more board members will step down, following last week’s resignation of president Don McLardy and fellow director Stuart Grimshaw.

Demons chief executive Peter Jackson said the decision to sack Neeld – who will be paid out in full, an amount believed to be $600,000 – was put to the board at a meeting early this month.

It was confirmed on Friday after the AFL Commission agreed to give the club almost $3 million of additional funding to help them restructure.

“This is a rebuild of the football club as a whole,” Jackson told reporters on Monday.

“This is not about a single person called a senior coach.

“Whether Mark continued on as senior coach or whether we replaced Mark with someone else, that in itself was not the answer for this football club.

“It’s a total rebuild, it starts with the board.”

Seventeen of Melbourne’s 28 losses in Neeld’s tenure were by more than 50 points and four of the five victories were against expansion clubs Gold Coast and the GWS Giants.

“From the board’s perspective and my perspective, the results just aren’t acceptable,” Jackson said.

He added the Demons had to act to ensure Melbourne players could see a future at the club and so could members.

He said this year’s terrible early results had resulted in a revenue hit the club couldn’t handle without AFL help.

“When the wheels fell off, so to speak, at the beginning of the year with the heavy losses, so did the revenues,” he said.

He added the AFL’s incentive to bail the Demons out was increased by their draining effect on the entire competition.

“We are a huge impediment to the industry at the moment in terms of opposition clubs playing us as their home games, our stakeholders, the MCC, broadcasters, everything you look at,” he said.

Neeld said his main emotion when Jackson told him of his sacking at 8am (AEST) on Monday was disappointment.

“It’s certainly been a rollercoaster ride for the last 18 months,” said Neeld.

He was boosted by the presence of the entire Melbourne playing list and the football department at Monday’s media conference.

“They’re good people,” he said.

“They have probably got the hardest job in all of this.

“In five days’ time they’re off to the MCG to take on St Kilda.”

When asked to describe his time as Melbourne coach, Neeld replied: “We had a crack. In the end it didn’t work out.”