The Real Malky Mackay

Taken from - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... -game.html

What a great first photograph on that site Sorry if already posted.

Engage Malky Mackay in earnest conversation and his voice is soft and understated. His views on football offer insight and intelligence. His young Watford team, just outside the Championship play-offs, have been reared on passing, movement and clever patterns.

Now remember, if you will, a strapping centre half who offered honest grit and graft, and combined them with a physicality learned as a bank clerk in Glasgow playing part-time and unpaid in Scotland’s lowest division.

Like player, like manager is one of football’s most fascinating misconceptions. Then again, Mackay does not fit many moulds.
Making the right noises: Malky Mackay preaches the beautiful game... and isn't doing too badly with those principles

Making the right noises: Malky Mackay preaches the beautiful game... and isn't doing too badly with those principles

As a player, he found success late, making his Scotland debut at the age of 32 on the same Hampden Park pitch where he had begun his career for Queen’s Park. As a manager, he has started early.

Twice he helped sides into the Premier League - first Norwich, then West Ham - only to leave to play first-team football. He is at one of the Championship’s poorest clubs - only Scunthorpe United have a lower wage bill - yet he preaches a playing style that is lavish and rich.

Still just 38, he acquired his first two coaching badges in England and took his next two, including the FIFA Pro licence, in Scotland to maximise the experience he was able to draw on. He has studied coaching techniques in Italy and Spain.

And when he has needed a talented youngster or two to bolster a painfully thin squad, the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson - who played alongside Mackay’s dad, also called Malky, at Queen’s Park - and Arsene Wenger have willingly sent him their starlets. Not bad for a so-called clogger.
Growing pains: Mackay has moved up quickly up the coaching ladder

Growing pains: Mackay has moved up quickly up the coaching ladder

‘They are giving you a youngster they think has potential but they want him treated properly,’ said Mackay. ‘They want him playing football, they want him educated and they want him going somewhere he comes back a better player.

‘The fact that Tom Cleverley [Manchester United] came on leaps and bounds and became an England Under 21 international while he was here, and so did Henri Lansbury [Arsenal], means that we are a trusted club. Sir Alex has been fantastic. He still sends me texts to say, “Great result at the weekend”.

‘We have to be seen as a club that bring in players on loan because we don’t have the money to go and buy them.’

Having seen his club at its financial worst last winter, Mackay doesn’t complain about the lack of money at Vicarage Road, even though the supporters have every right to wonder what happened to the £50million Premier League windfall that accompanied promotion four years ago.
Hornets' nest: Henri Lansbury and Tom Cleverley have both prospered at Watford
Hornets' nest: Henri Lansbury and Tom Cleverley have both prospered at Watford

Hornets' nest: Henri Lansbury and Tom Cleverley have both prospered at Watford

There has been no lasting legacy of that season among the elite. The main stand has been condemned and sits empty for home games save for the Press box in the back row, while last December the club almost fell into a financial abyss.

Today they entertain Brighton and will fancy their chances of reaching the FA Cup fifth round.

‘We were two hours from administration and I was sitting with the chief executive,’ Mackay recalls. ‘We’d been there since 9am and we were waiting while lawyers were speaking to lawyers and banks. It was pitch black outside and there were a lot of worried faces in that office. Staff who had worked at the club for 20 or 30 years were on the verge that day of losing their jobs.

‘It’s stable again now but we’ve still got the challenges ahead financially. It was something that you don’t want to go through too many times.’

Mackay talks common sense. His upbringing and his start in football demanded it and he retains a perspective which he tries to impress on his Watford youngsters every day.

‘I quite enjoyed the way that I came into football. Leaving school and going to work in the big wide world at 16 in the centre of Glasgow certainly made me grow up very quickly.
High times: Mackay was part of Watford's promotion winning side of 2006... five years later and that money has gone

High times: Mackay was part of Watford's promotion winning side of 2006... five years later and that money has gone

'So did playing against big strong men from Arbroath and East Fife, who want to kill you with every tackle, when I was in the Queen’s Park first team at 18. When I went to Celtic, I knew then what a great life this was. I had been on the flip-side of this, in the real world where people work hard for very little money and just get on with their life.
Great start: International recognition didn't come until his 30s

Great start: International recognition didn't come until his 30s

‘It made me want to stay in the afternoon and do extras. I tell the young pros now, “You shouldn’t be leaving here with your wash bag at one o’clock”. They will have sessions programmed but after that there is nothing to stop them asking a coach to take them for 15 minutes on something, a specific thing, or going into the gym or the medical department, the physio department.

‘If you just do that 15 minutes extra per day, four days a week, think how much that is going to help you. A lot of education and teaching has to happen here.

‘It’s not just about football, it’s about life. It’s about cooking, for example. Our chef gives them guidance and we’ve even taken some of them over the road to the huge Sainsbury’s, taken them down the aisles and told them, “This is what you should be eating, this is what maybe you shouldn’t.” It’s about making them more rounded players.’

Whether it was becoming the oldest Scotland debutant for 37 years when selected by Berti Vogts or defying logic to produce a passing team on a pitch which is dug up on a fortnightly basis by Saracens rugby players, Mackay takes nothing for granted.

‘There had been talk of a Scotland call-up, but when my wife and I came in one day and there was a message left on the answer phone by a garbled German voice asking me to phone him back, I thought, “Is that a wind-up?” We played it about five or six times and I still wasn’t sure, even when I phoned the number and this little German voice came on.

‘Pre-season, Watford were favourites to go down and rightly so if you just look on paper at the size and age of the squad and the financial restrictions.

‘But it galvanises what’s in here to say, “No, we’re not going to do that”. No-one has outclassed us so far. There’s always a wildcard which makes the play-offs or goes up.’

Watford, forsaken by previous manager Brendan Rodgers 15 months ago, may have stumbled on Mackay by default, but they are fortunate to have him. So are his players.

good article, cheers for the link

I really hope it's him

the thing that impressed me the most is the time he takes with his youngsters, and that even what they eat is vital
could you imagine DJ taking blake, mathews and other younsgters over to asda?

Very good article which gives an insight into MM and he may just be the right man for the job