It appeared as though he ruled the club with an iron fist.
Cut from similar managerial cloth as Sir Alex Ferguson, the man whose Aberdeen was thought to be the only club in Scotland that could challenge the Rangers-Celtic dominance, Jim McLean propelled little Dundee United to unprecedented success and almost capped it all by reaching the European Champions Cup final.
And it wasn’t Ferguson’s very fine Aberdeen side of the time which broke the Old Firm’s stranglehold on the Scottish title, it was McLean’s tangerine dream-team, Dundee United.
That was in 1982/83 after winning consecutive League Cups in 1979 and 1980.