Jim McLean was back inside Tannadice last Wednesday. A thrown punch? A police investigation. A formal charge of assault. None of it appeared to matter. McLean sat in his seat in the stand watching a Dundee United closed-doors match offering his usual wary scrutiny of players. One witness said he was bantering happily "and even cracking jokes". This, after two days when he’d been stretching his legs across the golf course. It is just possible that McLean, albeit ignominiously, has been liberated.

The punch he allegedly threw last Saturday at John Barnes, the BBC reporter, received garish television coverage. As a swansong in the game, there can be no greater humiliation. But McLean’s tightly-wound and elusive character might surprise us one more time. If his end was coming at United, as surely it was, there could certainly have been no quicker or cleaner severance. McLean will be able to live with this daft assault charge. There will be no prison cell, no theatrical court case, and it is just possible the sense of commotion surrounding him will clear up more quickly than John Barnes’s gashed lip. McLean has always been a Vesuvius waiting to erupt, but football will recall this incident with a sense of comedy more than outrage. At Christmas, when it is re-enacted on television’s satirical programmes, Jim will laugh with the rest of us, as will Barnes. The latter, in fact, will probably be asked to take part in the sketches.

There has been a lot in the past week on the character-influences of Jim McLean, in particular his Christian Brethren background. I’m not sure how much of this has amounted to a lot of socio-religious guff. This observer certainly can’t recall a tradition among that respected religious fellowship of members acting as he did last weekend. It is certainly true that in some books of the Old Testament there are vivid accounts of vengeance, but it must be doubted if Wee Jim has ever read Jeremiah or Deuteronomy. I think something that touches closer to the truth of McLean’s intemperate behaviour, last weekend and throughout his career, is found in another strain of Lanarkshire’s famous Christian culture - the Protestant church’s Puritanism and, in particular, their guilt and foreboding over wealth. Certainly in football, McLean has been unable to tolerate the sort of carnal pleasures and worldly indulgences of contemporary players that might even have made Nineveh blush.

The money that footballers began earning in the late 1980s and 1990s didn’t just arouse his fury, but evidently, a more deep-seated moral code. I remember sitting in McLean’s office one afternoon when, with the heat hovering on his forehead, he grabbed a sheet of paper and barked out some of the salaries that United’s staff were on. "Listen to this! Seventy thousand, sixty-five thousand, fifty-eight thousand, sixty-seven thousand, seventy-eight thousand, sixty-nine thousand, seventy-nine thousand...does this sound like a club that doesnae pay wages?" That was in 1995. I took his point, but I also recognised his wrath. The Brethren movement doesn’t advocate pugilism. It does, though, encourage thrift and moderation, which become fiery subjects in the hands of angry men. The deed now done, the resignation now tendered, it doesn’t really matter what concocted baloney we all come up with for McLean’s actions. He is a fascinating, complex and often disturbed man - confirmation of this alone should be enough for us to get on with. The point is, what will he now do with his significant shareholding in Dundee United? McLean faces a battle ahead and one more impossible judgment. The pressure group, United for Change, would do well not to dance on McLean’s grave. If this will serve to do one thing and one thing only, it will make McLean more bloody-minded than ever about handing over shares to a group whom he habitually refers to as "these bloody people". McLean currently owns 41% of United, or around 5,330 shares. Or more accurately, McLean’s family does: Jim has spent 10 years meticulously hoovering up shares here and there, and for obscure reasons has spread them around his wife, Doris, and his two sons, Gary and Colin, as well as lodging some in his own name. He has also, in the past few years, arranged for his brother, Tommy, to receive a small wedge.

But in layman’s terms, he effectively owns Dundee United. Both McLean and United for Change face an arduous future. McLean's problem is that he won’t want UfC, being the rebels, to receive his shares, yet he faces a credibility issue selling to people who evidently cannot serve United’s greater good. McLean's first option, and clearly his preferred one, is surely a non-starter. If he were to sell to either or all of Doug Smith, Bill Littlejohn, Bruce Robertson or Don Ridgway - his four remaining allies on United's board - it would clearly smack of a cronyism that couldn’t further United's financial base in the slightest. UfC, though, have their own dilemma. Who among this group has the financial muscle to resuscitate United? The outstanding candidate remains Eddie Thompson, the likeable and respected Dundee businessman, whose Morning, Noon and Night chain of stores continues to grow in the market. Yet Thompson, by his own admission, is not awash with money. A cash injection of, say, £2.5m into United, cannot represent the new Eden. Clubs such as Rangers, Celtic and even Leicester City pay this for one reserve player. McLean and Thompson, moreover, are embroiled in a mini-vendetta. Previously associates from the time when Thompson’s VG foods sponsored United in their glorious 1980s, the two men now communicate only via lawyers - or sometimes in fine weather through highly-readable slagging in the pages of the Dundee Evening Telegraph. Last week in the Telegraph, McLean told Thompson to "put your money where your mouth is". Thompson retorted in the paper the next day that McLean had threatened him with "hell freezing over" before he would ever sell him his shares. "I have contacted my lawyer, and he immediately faxed Mr McLean's lawyer [asking him] to name his price," Thompson told the Telegraph. "The ball is therefore firmly in Mr McLean's court." Since retiring from managing the club, McLean has taken up his irate perch in one of Tannadice’s corporate glass cages situated behind the dugouts - it is from here that some players have testified to seeing him staring out like Marley’s ghost on their performances. Only two doors along from McLean is where Thompson's box is to be found.

Since 1996, when Thompson started making well-meaning attempts to buy into United, the two are said to have walked silently past each other without exchanging a word. One witness says that McLean occasionally stops to offer Thompson "the odd wee glower" - but that is about it. Whatever the way forward, United's cashbox needs filling from somewhere. In April 1999, the club received a £3m injection from the Bank of Scotland: £2m to be spent on new players and £1m put in place as an overdraft facility. United's balance-sheet, according to neutral observers, is not as bad as some clubs’, but Tannadice is still becoming anaemic. Some of that money, such as £500,000 spent on Alex Mathie and £300,000 on Joachim Ferraz, has simply been frittered away. Currently, a Danish businessman in Copenhagen, Flemming Ostergaard, is said to be interested in investing, but others claim this is fantasy. Yesterday, Thompson said the issue was no longer about United's starry future - it was about the club just surviving in the here and now. "We’re right in the critical period - forget Europe, forget the past, it is now all about staying alive and still being in the Premier League come August," said Thompson. "If we are relegated this season our balance-sheet will be destroyed. We’ve become a laughing-stock - it is the tragedy of what Jim and the board have presided over. If I and others can get aboard, we’ll go and get good pros who can help United out of their predicament - and by that I don’t mean going to the ends of the earth to sign players.

There has been mismanagement at Tannadice. Money, or a lack of it, has not been the reason for us being bottom of the league. It is how the club has spent its money." In an increasingly bitter battle, which will centre upon McLean's shares, Thompson has graciously expressed sympathy for the former chairman’s plight..."Jim and I disagree about the way forward, but we’re both absolutely passionate about the club. And after what has happened recently, I believe this must be a bit frightening for Jim. It’s a major shift for him. In the battle for control of the club I’m trying to be fair: it can’t be easy for him to adjust to the necessary changes. Throughout all of this, whatever I think of Jim now, it is impossible to forget the 1980s under him. He was a great manager, as good as Stein: I don’t care what anyone says." ©Scotland On Sunday