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Former Dundee United boss Ivan Golac greeted news of Jim McLean's departure from Tannadice with delight and insisted: "He should have gone YEARS ago!" McLean quit last week following an alleged incident involving BBC journalist John Barnes but Golac believes United wouldn't be in their current mess if McLean had severed all links with the club when he quit as boss in June 1993. Golac claimed: McLEAN was like a ghost whose presence was ALWAYS evident at Tannadice. GOLAC went to a club where people had lost the power to SMILE, never mind win. That he knew within days of taking over as boss that McLean was refusing to concede power or even give the new manager his own office! Golac - now masterminding youth football in Yugoslavia - said: "He stayed too long five years too long. "It's all ended horribly for him whereas if he'd left the club alto- gether after he'd been manager he'd be highly-thought of and remem- bered for all the good things he did for the club in the 80s. "Your whole life has to be about judgments. Players should quit be- fore they start getting called 'old man' by people in the stands. Chair- men should be the same. "I think you can see what went wrong at Dundee United by the three managers who followed me af- ter I left. Two of them were players who'd worked under McLean Billy Kirkwood and Paul Sturrock and the other was his brother! "Richard Gough summed it up very well at the time. He said that the manager who took over after I left would give a big indication of who was running the show at the club. "So I think the people who folIowed me underlined what he meant. People told me he'd either appoint his brother or some former player — and they were right. They were back to the types of people he knew. He didn't want anyone similar to me in terms of independence and freedom. I don't blame these guys, they proba- bly wanted to be free but something was always dragging them back be- cause Jim McLean was always around. "And it doesn't surprise me that the club have gone through as many managers as they have in the five years since I left. If McLean had stayed that would have continued. "I feel genuinely sorry for the posi- tion the club are in. I don't take any pleasure from it. But Doug Smith is a good man, totally different to McLean. and I hope he can change the whole air of the place. "When Jim McLean was at the club it was like having a ghost at the club. It was spooky - his presence was always there. "He was chairman and managing director — what did he need a board for? It was obvious he was in complete control. "The way I was treated sums him up. If I am ever chairman of a club and I bring in a manager who wins a trophy the club have never won before within 10 months of arriving, I think I'd do whatever it took to keep him as long as I could. But no effort was made to keep me. "But I always remember the night we won the Cup. We want back to the hotel for the victory party and goalkeeper Guido van de Kamp came over to me and said he couldn't understand why the chairman looked so miserable." Golac insists two different incidents when he took over convinced him from the start that McLean would have an overpowering influence on the club he was arriving to manage. Golac said: "A week before I took over McLean released Miodrag Krivokapic, whereas I would have kept him and built the team around guys like him, Maurice Malpas, Jim Mclnally and David Bowman. Smiling "Miodrag would have been the, ideal guy to have because he was a ' quality player and very popular with everyone at the club. Instead he went away to Motherwell where he was a star there. "Then when I arrived I found McLean didn't even want me to have my own office. I was having to change in a coaches room downstairs while he was still in the manager's office. Eventually I got my own office but not his' "Right away, I felt there was a strange atmosphere about the club. I am a positive person and everywhere I go I like to try and make a good impression. But at Dundee United when I went in every morning no one was smiling, everyone seemed so down. "That worried me. If there's no spirit you're never going to have any confidence. If you can't enjoy play- ing football, what's the point in do- ing it? "I'd love to see Dundee United back to being one of the top four clubs in Scotland and it's possible, because it's a lovely set-up. But they have to start from zero." ©News Of The World