Cardiff City chairman Mehmet Dalman says Malky Mackay has been assured that he will not be sacked, at least for the time being anyway.
Mackay led the Bluebirds to promotion for the first time in the Premier League era last season, and they have made a bright start to life in the top-flight this term. However, his relationship with club owner Vincent Tan has broken down in recent times, and this has led to the belief that the Scot would be relieved of his duties any day now.
Indeed, it was widely reported last week that the controversial Tan had sent Mackay an email, in which he demanded the 41-year-old resign or he would be sacked. Despite this, the former Watford manager is simply refusing to hand in his notice, and was in the dugout on Saturday afternoon as he saw his side fall to a 3-1 loss at Liverpool.
When he waved goodbye to the fans congregated in the away end at Anfield it looked as though he was bidding farewell, but it now appears as though he has been given a reprieve. Chairman Dalman, who met with Tan last Friday, has now revealed that Mackay is safe from the sack for now, but stopped short of assuring him of a long-term future.
“The crisis for the time being is over,” Dalman said. “My definition of diplomacy is to create space for dialogue. I have spoken to Vincent Tan and he has agreed I can go into bat to try to bring a solution to this situation. There’s goodwill on Vincent’s side. I’ve not had a chance to talk to Malky just yet, but I will obviously do that as well.
“We need to have further dialogue to see if we can get through this together for the good of the club, which is the most important thing. We managed to create space for everyone to work together back in October and we have to see if we can do that again in order to move forward. At least we have a platform for dialogue, which gives us an opportunity to try to work our way through this. If we wish to work towards a reconciliation, Vincent Tan has offered us that opportunity to move towards that.
“If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But at least I, as a responsible person and chairman of this football club, have tried my best. I’m not taking sides in this, I’m just trying to do my best for the good of the club. Let’s see if we can fix it. We can’t keep having the club under a cloud, so this is it. We managed to get two or three months leeway last time and we need to create something similar again. I’m not putting a timescale upon this, but we have to try. Vincent Tan is in London for a while, so at least he is physically here which makes it easier to have that face-to-face dialogue.”
