UPDATE Mick Malthouse's sacking as coach of Carlton is expected within hours after a radio interview saw Carlton chiefs immediately call an unscheduled meeting of board members and chief executive Steven Trigg.
CEO Trigg, football boss Andrew McKay and media boss Jay Allen left the club together on Tuesday morning in a car headed for talks with chairman Mark LoGiudice.
Malthouse held training at Carlton and attended his regular opposition analysis meeting despite having earlier provoked the club to bring forward his sacking.
He told staff that he believed he would be removed imminently.
LoGiudice has previously resisted sacking Malthouse despite looking at moving on the coach last Friday, but the Blues now believe their hand has been forced.
Dean Laidley is the strong frontrunner to step in as interim coach for the remainder of the season.
Malthouse's interview with SEN on Tuesday morning saw him again hit out at the club's rebuilding announcement and also suggest that the Eddie Betts deal had been "stitched up" 18 months before it was officially ratified.
Malthouse reiterated he will not be standing down, while not missing the opportunity to take a swipe at the club's board.
Malthouse met LoGiudice and Trigg on Monday and was told he would officially learn his fate after the Blues' round 10 clash with Adelaide at the MCG.
Malthouse said that the coach is "the first to go" to relieve some of the pressure on a beleaguered board.
"Good boards stay sound. Boards crack under pressure," he said.
The veteran coach said he knew it would be difficult to keep his job after the departure of chief executive Greg Swann and president Stephen Kernahan - who got Malthouse to the club after the Blues' poor 2012 season under Brett Ratten.
But he said the talk pre-season, around the football department and the club's position, had been positive.
"Oh, totally, totally," he said, when asked if he felt the goalposts had shifted.
Malthouse ridiculed the club's decision to hold off on making an announcement on his future until the round 11 bye in mid-June.
When asked if he thought he would be coach after that weekend, Malthouse said he wasn't sure what people could learn in two weeks that they didn't already know from his 30 years of coaching.
"The question should be, what do people learn after two weeks?
"We play Sydney with a depleted side and we play Adelaide with hopefully a couple of blokes coming back but we're not too sure about that either."
Though he does not expect to be reappointed, Malthouse said he would have to be sacked by Carlton if they wanted him gone.
"I will not be standing down," he said.
"I'm not going to let [the players] down because they deserve better ... along with the rest of my match committee."
Malthouse insisted he hadn't lost the players' loyalty.
"The day I feel the players aren't responding ... that's when you do stop coaching."
He said the club needed to say it was in rebuild mode, but players felt alienated and "hung out on a limb" by the announcement.
Malthouse said the idea of a caretaker coach was "damn ridiculous" and questioned the benefits of appointing a fill-in.
"Is it an ego trip? Is it a pressure valve release? I really don't know."
He didn't know if any interim coach would be brought in from elsewhere or if it would be one of his assistants.
Malthouse said he knew the team hadn't been playing well. He would "never blame injuries" but said he put it on the public agenda in the last couple of weeks because no one else was.
"We just haven't been able to get anything near a side that we believe is our most competitive," he said.
"Our list is shallow, everyone knows that.
"Recruitment has been an issue, but that's in the past."
He said the list had been cut by 50 per cent and though there were some promising young players at Carlton, there were some players he wished the Blues still had, naming Crows star recruit Eddie Betts as one such player.
Malthouse claimed that the deal for Betts, who went to Adelaide at the end of 2013, was done months in advance of it going public.
He said Steven Trigg, who was chief executive at Adelaide before becoming CEO at Carlton, told him that the Crows had Betts "stitched up 18 months out".
Betts' manager refuted the claim on Twitter.
@MorningGlorySEN That is 100% incorrect— Ned Guy (@nedguy12)
May 25, 2015
Malthouse recently broke Jock McHale's record for the most VFL/AFL games coached. He has coached West Coast, the Western Bulldogs and Collingwood. His contract with Carlton expires at the end of the 2015 season.
