Jim McLean admitted he should have left Dundee United and gone to Rangers when he was offered the Ibrox job 40 years ago.
The Rangers board turned to McLean in the autumn of 1983 when John Greig was sacked after a five-year spell in charge.
The Ibrox club thought they’d lured Alex Ferguson away from Aberdeen, only for an 11th-hour about turn by their target.
Then McLean was asked to take over.
Like Ferguson, McLean had been hugely successful at United, winning back-to-back League Cups in 1979 and 1980 and the Premier League title in May 1983.
Rangers approached United after McLean led the Tangerines into the quarter-final of the European Cup following a 4-0 victory against Standard Liege at Tannadice.
He initially indicated his willingness to leave Tannadice for Ibrox and even invited Walter Smith to remain his number two and join him.
Yet, as he recorded in an early chronicle of his career, the United directors were in tears at the thought of him going and the chairman sent flowers and chocolates to his wife.
“It was easily the worst weekend of my whole life,” he said.
“Because the offer Rangers made to me could not have been bettered anywhere, at all.
“Financially, it was the best offer of any of the 11 that I have received – and far and away better than anything than Dundee United might have been able to offer me.
“In everything else, the Rangers directors were ready to give me a free hand.
“It was a fantastic offer, even better than I would have imagined possible.
“I knew that Rangers were a big, big club.
“So much bigger than we can ever be at Tannadice.
“I knew, too, that they desperately wanted success but I didn’t realise just how much money they were prepared to pay to get that success.
“This time I was tempted.
“More than ever before.”
Rangers offered Jim McLean 100% wage rise
Rangers chairman Rae Simpson offered to double McLean’s basic salary with the same guaranteed bonuses and pension and buy him a £100,000 house in the west coast.
McLean would also be given full control to sign Catholic players if he wanted.
He said: “Rae Simpson led the talks and both he and the other members of the board made it very plain to me that any ban on Catholic players was not a part of club policy.
“They wanted the old mould broken — just as I would have done had I taken the job.
“In fact, it would have been a matter of urgency for me.
“Yet, just under 24 hours later, I had turned down the whole marvellous package.
“There are still times when I think back to that offer and I regret the decision I made —but I was placed in an extraordinary, complicated situation.”
Johnstone Grant took over as chairman in 1967 and oversaw the appointment of McLean as manager in 1971 when he made the short flit from Dens Park in 1971.
Grant was seriously ill when Rangers came calling for McLean.
“The directors at Tannadice were in tears at the thought of my going,” he said.
“The chairman phoned me constantly and every conversation ended with him crying over the phone.
“He sent flowers and chocolates to my wife and he pointed out how much I’d meant to the club.
“I’m not exaggerating my own importance to the club when I say that it would have broken his heart.
“In many, many ways, he treated me like a son and I knew he was ill at the time.
“I just didn’t know how seriously ill he was.
“It was only a few months later that he died.
“If I had left the club and that had happened, I would have still been blaming myself.
“I did make the right decision, as regards my relationship with the chairman, and also out of loyalty to the club who had given me my chance as a manager and who had stayed loyal to me down through the years — even when there were troubled times.”
That was important.
Just as important was McLean’s family.
McLean was sorely tempted but decided not to expose his family to the goldfish-bowl existence that came with the job.
“As far as Jim McLean, football manager, was concerned I made the wrong decision to stay at Dundee United,” he said.
“I should have gone to Rangers.
“No one will ever convince me otherwise.
“I have absolutely no doubts about that, at all.
“But Jim McLean, football manager, is not the sole factor in my life.”
He publicly announced he would be staying at the club on November 7 1983.
Not everyone was happy about the decision.
Derek Johnstone was sitting on his own in the Tannadice dressing room during a month’s loan spell from Chelsea when Walter Smith burst in – and lost the rag.
“He was obviously in a bad mood,” recalled the Gers icon.
“He threw down a bag of balls and said: ‘I guess I’ll just have to put the scarf back in the cupboard’.
“He went on to explain United boss Jim McLean had just turned down the offer to replace John Greig as Rangers manager.
“Walter was all ready to move with him to his boyhood idols, so no wonder he was annoyed.”
Eventually, Rangers had to bring back Jock Wallace, who had led the club to two trebles in three seasons in the 1970s.
Three years later, however, Graeme Souness was named Rangers’ first player-manager and appointed Smith his number two.
A pang of Rangers regret still lingered for Jim McLean
Souness changed the landscape of Scottish football by persuading top-ranked English internationals like Terry Butcher, Trevor Steven and Ray Wilkins to go to Ibrox.
“On many, many sleepless nights, and on many, many other occasions, I do wish that I had taken on the Rangers’ job,” McLean said in his 1987 memoir.
“I wasn’t frightened by the size of it because I genuinely feel that the job I have to do at Tannadice is a harder job.
“I’m certain that I could do the job that Graeme Souness has now — though probably not in the same way — but I don’t know if he could do my job here at Tannadice.”
And nobody did it better.
McLean managed United from 1971 to 1993, becoming the longest-serving and most successful manager in the club’s history.
He was also assistant to Jock Stein with the Scotland national team in the early 1980s.
McLean decided to swap his manager’s chair for the chairman’s seat on a full-time basis in 1993, before eventually departing the role for good in 2000.
He died at the age of 83 on Boxing Day 2020 following a battle with dementia.
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