David White

DAVID White, who has died aged 80, will be best remembered for his short spell as the youngest manager of Rangers in the late 1960s.

He was already 23 when he got out of junior football into the senior game from that long-standing Larkhall talent nursery Royal Albert in 1957, joining Clyde as a part-time player and combining games at Shawfield and elsewhere on a Saturday with Monday to Friday toil as an engineer. He played more than 313 games for the Bully Wee and was club captain and player-coach when, on March 31, 1966, he went "upstairs" as team manager, succeeding John Prentice when the former boss became Scotland team manager.

White was an immediate success, winning his first game as boss, when he masterminded a 3-2 Shawfield win over Falkirk on April 6, 1966. The following season he guided the unfashionable wee club to third in the old 18-club Scottish First Division in 1967. White's Clyde team also took a Celtic side, less than a month away from Lisbon immortality, to a replay in the Scottish Cup semi-final that season.

That success qualified Clyde for entry to European football – the following season's European Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, the forerunner to today's Europa League. Unfortunately, Rangers had finished second and also qualified for a place and regulations prohibited two clubs from the same city competing. Clyde protested that Clyde came from Rutherglen and not Glasgow, but Uefa bosses refused to accept this and Dundee, another of White's future clubs, who had finished sixth, got their place – and reached the semi-finals.

White's success with Clyde had marked him out as the brightest young manager in Scotland. Scot Symon was still managing Rangers but Celtic's re-birth under Jock Stein was gathering pace and on the back of the Parkhead club winning the European Cup, it was decided by the Rangers board a younger coach should be brought in to assist Symon and, ultimately, to replace him as manager.

White had been born and raised a Rangers fan and there was no way he could turn down the chance to move to Ibrox, particularly with the carrot of succeeding Symon dangled in front of him. White joined Rangers and prepared to learn on the job. Unfortunately for him the Rangers board panicked. While Stein was always being pictured tracksuited on the training ground with his players, the be-suited trilby-wearing Symon was seen as an out-dated, old-fashioned boss. The feeling in the board room was Rangers simply had to have a new, tracksuit-wearing manager.

They invited Symon to move to an overseeing, mainly administrative role as general manager, with White taking over responsibility for the playing side. But Symon pointed out that his side was topping the league and refused to agree to the change. He was sacked and, after just six months at the club, White was appointed manager in November, 1967.

White made a good start as manager. He took over a team topping the league and the team matched Celtic point for point all season. With striker Colin Stein, for whom White paid Hibs the first £100,000 transfer fee in Scottish football, suspended during the run-in, the goals dried up. Although Rangers lost just one league game all season, to a sucker punch breakaway Aberdeen goal in their final league fixture, they finished two points behind Celtic, who won their third straight Scottish League title.

The club enjoyed a good Uefa Cup in 1968-69, reaching the semi-finals, where they lost to winners Newcastle United, but they trailed Celtic in the league, lost out to them in the League Cup qualifying group and were humiliated 0-4 by their great rivals in the Scottish Cup final. A third successive trophy-less season heaped pressure on White.

Season 1969-70 began badly as Celtic bested them in the League Cup section, then won the first league meeting of the sides at Ibrox. With Rangers struggling and Celtic steaming off into the distance, the Bears all had sore heads. His difficulties with an increasingly impatient board of directors had multiplied after he brought former club legend Jim Baxter back to Rangers from Nottingham Forest.

Baxter, no longer the Slim Jim of legend, was already setting-off down the road towards his own destruction. He could no longer orchestrate a game as regularly and frequently as in his heyday, while the longer-serving directors remembered what a pain he had been first time around.

Things came to a head when Rangers crashed 3-1 in Poland to Gornik Zabrze in the second-round, first-leg Cup-Winners' Cup tie. White's bad luck had shown itself in this match, where everyone from Rangers, particularly goalkeeper Gerry Neef, was convinced the ball had not crossed the line for the Pole's second goal, then a rare mistake by Danish right back Kai Johanssen gifted the Pole's a last-minute third.

White was convinced Rangers could still win the second leg at Ibrox, and the tie. Once again bad luck hit. Baxter scored an early goal, then Andy Penman and Willie Johnston missed gilt-edged chances and, as Rangers' heads went down, in the final half-hour, Gornik, who would go on to reach the final, scored three goals for a 6-2 aggregate win.

The Bears mainly ambled back to the woods, fans who stayed behind booed loud and long, the Rangers board met post-match and White was sacked. He was only 35, his side was second-top of the league and ahead of Celtic. The decision to dispense with his service seemed a hurried and ill-considered panic.

He was out of football until January 1972, when he returned as Dundee manager, again replacing John Prentice. He remained at Dens Park for five and a half years, the highlight of which was in December, 1972, when Gordon Wallace's 86th minute goal gave the 'Dee a 1-0 win over Celtic and possession of the League Cup for the first time in 20 years. He is one of only four managers to win a major trophy with the Dens Park club. He also took the club to four Scottish Cup semi-finals, and gave a first-team debut to a teenager named Gordon Strachan, thus confirming his keen "nose" for a good player.

White, quite understandably embittered by football, then returned to "civilian" life. He worked for a time in an Angus supermarket, before returning to his roots, spending many years in the employ of fellow Lanarkshire boy and Rangers' supporter Ian Skelly.

White was a dignified old-school Rangers man who refused right up until his death to criticise the club which had treated him so shabbily.

Away from his continued supporting of Rangers, he enjoyed golf, with his passion for the game continuing through son Alan, head professional at Lanark Golf Club.

His bad luck continued; his wife died at a comparatively young age and he did not remarry. He is survived by his sons, Stuart, with whom he was living up until his final illness, and Alan; he leaves no grandchildren.