Controversial manager Malky Mackay has taken charge of Championship side Wigan Athletic.
The former Cardiff City gaffer has been confirmed as the man Wigan fans hope will guide them to promotion this season. The Latics chairman Dave Whelan confirmed the news on the club’s official website.
He is the man to lead us back into the Premier League, I am convinced of that having met him and discussed the demands of the job ahead of him.
Mackay has a good record of getting teams promoted to the Premier League. He brought both Watford and Cardiff City up to the top flight as a manager. Whelan admitted that this played a huge part in him landing the Wigan job.
He has led a team out of the Championship before and he knows this league inside out having played and managed in it. His achievements at Cardiff City were magnificent and we need a strong leader who will command the respect of a very experienced and talented dressing room – and he is the man to do it. I am delighted we have secured the services of someone who has so much to give to the game.
Mackay came under fire earlier this year when he was at the heart of a controversial text scandal. The manager allegedly sent a series of offensive texts to Crystal Palace director of football Iain Moody while he was at Cardiff City. The texts offended pretty much everyone under sun and included:
– joking about a fictional game called ‘Black Monopoly’ where every square reads ‘Go to Jail’
– calling a French player an ‘independently minded young homo’
– referring to South Korean footballers as ‘fkn chinkys’ before adding that there are ‘enough dogs to go around in Cardiff’
– an anti-semitic comment about a Jewish football agent
– referring to Israeli outfit Macabi Haifa as “the Jews”
– asking a young player with a female agent if he’d ‘like a bounce off her falsies’.
Whelan knows that appointing a manager with such a past is bound to receive some backlash. However, he is confident that Mackay has been punished enough for the debacle and he has adequately apologised for causing any offence.
I know that this appointment will draw criticism in some quarters but we go into it with our eyes open and we have nothing to hide on this subject.
Malky made a mistake, he knows that, we know that and we have discussed this issue at length face to face. He apologised publicly for what happened at the time and has paid for what he did in terms of the bad publicity he has received since and will no doubt continue to suffer in the future.
But I believe that it is now time to move on. Contrary to the way he has been portrayed in recent months, the Malky Mackay I met this week, and who has been vouched for by the many different people from whom we have sought advice before making this appointment, is an honourable man.
Hat-tip to Wigan Latics
