Malky Mackay, the man who gave Sean Dyche his big break on the road to management, believes Everton have hired “more than a head coach” who possesses a far greater depth of thought than many give him credit for.
The 50-year-old Scot, now back in his homeland with Premiership side Ross County, brought Dyche in as his assistant at Watford and the now Everton manager ended up succeeding him at Vicarage Road.
Mackay told the ECHO: “I first really got to know Sean when he was the Under-18s manager, driving the mini bus from the academy up to the training ground, watching him do his sessions, being in the lunch room with him and having coffee with him, we just clicked. I find him engaging, gregarious and diligent in his work.
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“The word ‘discipline’ gets thrown out about him too often but there was a good professionalism, let me say, to everything he wanted done at the football club. We talked football, got on and there was an understanding there.
“One of the biggest things I’d say about him is that he’s authentic. What you see is what you get with him.
“Back in 2008 I was caretaker manager at Watford and I had club legend Alec Chamberlain (a former understudy of Neville Southall at Everton) alongside me and I asked Sean to come up from the Under-18s team to help me run it for a few weeks. We were close then with the three of us looking after the first team for a month but when I went for the job permanently, the club decided to give it to some unknown, random guy at the time called Brendan Rodgers!
“Sean went back to the Under-18s but at the end of the season, Brendan went off to Reading, I applied again and got the job. We’d worked well together previously so Sean came back as my assistant alongside Alec again while we also brought in David Kerslake and we had two really tight years together at Watford in what was a real period of challenges at the time.”
Spells with Cardiff City and Wigan Athletic followed for Mackay after leaving Watford plus a game in charge of the Scotland national team as caretaker boss before he returned to management with his current Dingwall-based employers ahead of the 2021/22 season. While Dyche himself once proclaimed “don’t fight the box you’re put in” when it comes to being characterised, his former colleague does not think he always gets the credit he deserves.
Mackay said: “I think if you’re a manager for almost a decade at Burnley then there’s going to be a spotlight on you and it’s undoubted that everyone will have an opinion on you, but very rarely do many people know you.
“That’s the case with Sean, I don’t think that many people actually know him in terms of who he is and what he is. People stick him in a box based on what they might have read in an article or watched on television but to actually go and run a football club – which is what he did at Burnley, he ran the whole football side of that club – to be in the Premier League and win promotion from the Championship a couple of times, takes much more than the kind of character he is sometimes typecast as being.
“I think there’s a real depth of thought that people don’t see when they categorise him in such ways. When he does his podcasts and interviews, people start to see and hear the guy that really understands the nuances of the game and gets the emotional intelligence of players which is huge nowadays.
“He couldn’t have enjoyed the kind of success that he achieved at Burnley without that because in the modern game, you go nowhere without that emotional intelligence. I think he’s got a good balance to things in terms of wanting professionalism and standards from his own playing career and that comes from being cut from the kind of cloth that understands the requirements of English football, at all levels, not just the heady mix of the Premier League."
Although Dyche has arrived on Merseyside in the midst of a relegation battle for the Blues – their points total under Frank Lampard was the club’s lowest equivalent ever at that stage of a season – Mackay, who was linked with the Everton manager's job himself almost a decade ago when compatriot David Moyes' long reign in charge ended, believes that Goodison Park chiefs have, belatedly in his eyes, made the right decision to bring in the 51-year-old as he’s the kind of manager who will suit their needs.
He said: “It’s not like he’s worked abroad, he understands the English game and English culture and I’d imagine that he understands Liverpool as a city. I played at Goodison many years ago against Everton and I think it’s a terrific atmosphere, a terrific working class football club and I think Sean will immediately get to grips with that.
“He was touted for the Everton job over five years ago now and I’d have thought he’d have been an excellent fit for it then, just like I do now. With the greatest respect to Everton Football Club, I genuinely think they’re lucky to have him.
“Given Sean’s track record in English football, I think they should have bitten his hand off to get him years ago. In football you look at what a manager is doing with what he’s got in terms of the budget, team and what is around him, but when he ended up taking Burnley to seventh in the Premier League and into Europe, it’s remarkable.
“Had it been a different manager who had pulled off such an achievement, I think they’d have been touted for a top-six job. Sean wasn’t, which I find incredible, but he’s bided his time and now a terrific job has come round again.
“I think what he did at Burnley with their resources, punching above their weight for many years on a budget akin to a club in the Championship, finishing above teams who had more money, shows that he’s absolutely equipped for the Everton job. He’ll have a good understanding of what’s needed and will probably strip a lot back to the basics of football, we’ve already seen that in the Arsenal game and the conversations he’s had but then he will build in his own style.
“He’s more than a head coach, he knows how to carry himself as an ambassador and a front to the club. He’s a leader and someone who will want to stand up, wear the Everton badge with pride and someone who the fans can really get behind.”
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