Career
Mackay was born in Edinburgh, and began his playing career with the club he supported as a boy, Heart of Midlothian. He won all three Scottish domestic honours with the club. He captained the side in 1957–58 when the club broke the senior British league goalscoring record with 132 goals for, with only 29 conceded.
He was signed by Tottenham Hotspur for £32,000 in March 1959. During the 1960s his fierce determination and skill contributed to the team which won the Double in 1961, further FA Cup victories in 1962 and 1967, and the Cup Winners Cup in 1963. Brian Clough claimed in 2003 that Mackay was Tottenham Hotspur's greatest ever player.
In 1968 he was transferred to Derby County for £5,000, after Brian Clough and Peter Taylor persuaded him to sign. In his first season at the Baseball Ground, in which the club gained promotion to the First Division, he was chosen FWA Footballer of the Year, jointly with Manchester City's Tony Book. When he was a player at Derby County, Clough made Mackay play in a sweeping role and used his influence on the team to encourage them to turn defence into attack through a passing game.
In 1971 he was appointed player-manager of Swindon Town but left after just one season to take charge of Nottingham Forest. He remained at the City Ground until October 1973, when he returned to Derby as manager following Clough's resignation. In his first season Derby finished third in the table. In his second season in charge of Derby, he guided the team to the 1975 league title. The following season, he managed the club to a respectable fourth-place finish in the league, the semifinals of the FA Cup, and an unfortunate extra time second-round exit to Real Madrid in the 1976 European Cup. At one stage the side had been in the running for the Double. Mackay was sacked in November 1976 after a poor start to the season. A newspaper headline reading "Mackay sacked" was used as a visual prop in the British television situation comedy Porridge, which featured a prison officer named Mackay.
He then had an uneventful spell as Walsall manager from March 1977 to August 1978. This was followed by nine years coaching in Kuwait. He returned to the UK and was appointed manager of Doncaster Rovers in 1987, a year after being linked with the Scotland manager's job (which ultimately went to Andy Roxburgh).
Mackay's reign at Belle Vue lasted two seasons before he moved to Birmingham City, who had just been relegated to the third tier of the league for the first time in their history. His task was simple – to get Birmingham promoted to the Second Division. But he was unsuccessful in trying to achieve this and resigned in 1991. After that, he returned to the Middle East for two years managing Zamalek, a Cairo club team, with which he won the Championship, and then a further three years in Qatar before retiring from football altogether in 1997.
Read more about this topic: Dave Mackay (footballer Born 1934)
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