Craig Levein needs total Dundee United control as Kevin Gallacher lays out Jim McLean blueprint for success

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.

Levein is understood to be mulling over a sensational return to the rock bottom Tangerines with 12 games left of the Premiership season to save their skins. Gallacher is in no doubt that key to his decision will be assurances of outright control of footballing matters with under-fire sporting director Tony Asghar having now exited the club.

He argues Levein’s previous track record at Tannadice - where he led the club to safety after replacing Craig Brewster in 2006 before delivering back-to-back fifth place finishes - demands that he is