Billy McLaren

Billy McLaren (born 7 June 1948 in Glasgow) is a Scottish former association football player and manager.

Player

McLaren was well-travelled as a player, serving eight different Scottish league clubs. His longest service was to Dumfries club, Queen of the South. In a subsequent interview, team mate Jocky Dempster named McLaren in what he felt was the eleven best players at the club in the 1970s. Iain McChesney was another to name McLaren in the best players at Palmerston Park at the time.

He helped Hibernian gain promotion back to the Scottish Premier Division in 1981 after signing for the club in December 1980. McLaren trained with Hibs part-time while retaining a job as a civil servant.

His last club was Partick Thistle, where manager Benny Rooney had intended McLaren to coach, but he was pressed into service due to injuries to other players.

Management

McLaren managed both Queen of the South and Albion Rovers in two different spells, resigning from the Albion job to retake the Queen of the South job in 1993. McChesney was among his back room staff in both managerial spells at Queens. It was in McLaren's first spell at Queens that he signed the teenage Andy Thomson.

He was Stranraer manager during the 2002–03 season, when the club began a remarkable run of being either promoted or relegated every season. This brought an unsuccessful end to a spell during which he had won manager of the month awards in December 1999 and October 2002. The club had pushed for promotion in the 2000–01 season and reached the quarter-final stage of the Scottish Cup for the first time in their history, in the 2002–03 season.

McLaren is currently employed as a youth scout for Rangers.