Kevin Gallacher spent seven years at Dundee United at a time when the manager had 100 per cent control of how the entire club was run.
That was the Jim McLean edition of Dundee United. Wee Jim, manager, chairman and essentially everything to do with the Tangerines. The term sporting director had never been heard and chief executives were for banks not football clubs. Those days, sadly like the legend McLean, are gone. But as United now hunt for their 21st manager since the man whose statue now stands proudly at the entrance to Tannadice stood down from the manager’s chair in 1993, Gallacher insists a level of control is what is required again for the man charged with replacing Liam Fox.
Craig Levein is the man in Mark Ogren’s sights as United chiefs appear set to travel back in time to solve their manager hunt. Just don’t dare brand Levein as ‘yesterday’s man’. That’s an insult that’s as out of touch as it is lazy according to Gallacher. The Hall of Fame icon reckons the 58-year-old’s credentials stack up against the best of them after more than 20 years at the top of the game in two spells with Hearts either side of Dundee United and Leicester and of course the Scotland national team.
