Collingwood are on the hunt for their fifth football boss since 2013 after the resignation of Graeme Allan following his AFL ban.
The latest change comes at a critical time for the Magpies, with coach Nathan Buckley needing a big season from the team next year to ensure he keeps his job.
Collingwood were among the big losers out of Tuesday's AFL Commission meeting, with Allan falling on his sword shortly after he accepted a 12-month AFL ban for his part in the Lachie Whitfield affair.
His departure is a blow for Magpies president Eddie McGuire, who was pivotal in luring him from Greater Western Sydney this year.
McGuire will enter his 19th season in charge next year - a full decade more than the next longest-serving current club president, Adelaide's Rob Chapman.
McGuire railed against media reports suggesting his position was under pressure.
"What is going to happen and what I can see from one hundred miles, is that papers, the cricket is no good and they want to get a story going," McGuire said on Triple M on Wednesday.
"And the story that they are all trying to rev up is that Collingwood (are in) disarray and I'm under pressure etcetera.
"It is not happening. It is a made-up attack on the football club and me."
Geoff Walsh, one of the key figures in Collingwood's 2010 premiership, left his role as Magpies football manager in 2013.
Since then Rodney Eade, Neil Balme and most recently Allan have filled the role.
Now Collingwood football operations manager Marcus Wagner will have the job on an interim basis while they look for a full-time replacement.
Allan, the Giants' football boss at the time, was banned after Whitfield stayed at then-GWS welfare manager Craig Lambert's house for three days in May last year, allegedly to avoid a potential drug test.
The trio were ultimately penalised for breaching the AFL's rules and not the anti-doping code.
Whitfield will miss seven games of the 2017 season after accepting a six-month ban and Lambert has copped a 12-month suspension, with all sanctions ticked off by ASADA.
Allan only replaced Balme in August after initially joining the club in a more development-based role in May, with the Pies aware he was under investigation when they hired him.
But in accepting his resignation, the club revealed they were not made fully aware of all facets of the investigation.
"Collingwood received from Allan, in the form of a statutory declaration, a satisfactory account of the events in question," a club statement read.
"Collingwood was not aware or informed of the fact the matter was with the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority at the time of Allan's appointment."
Balme has since been appointed football chief at Richmond, with Allan's absence leaving Collingwood's football department in a parlous state heading into a make-or-break year for Buckley.
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