Swansea City and Watford go head to head at the Liberty Stadium as the Swans look for a vital home win as they push on for promotion.<\/p>\n
And standing in the opposite dugout to Brendan Rodgers will be one of his great friends – Malky Mackay – who took over from Rodgers at Watford following his departure.<\/p>\n
The two have remained in close contact as Rodgers explained to the Western Mail “Me and Malky are close <\/p>\n
“I kept him on my staff as first-team coach at Watford and he was fantastic.<\/p>\n
“During the seven months I was there we became quite close and we still talk a lot.<\/p>\n
“After the game against Leeds he sent me a text at about 1.25am, probably thinking I was in bed.<\/p>\n
“But I was watching a third re-run of our game and I sent him a text back so he rang me and from 1.30am until 2.45am we were talking football.<\/p>\n
“I think our wives thought we were mad!<\/p>\n
Football is our life and our passion and we’re both family guys as well,” added Rodgers.<\/p>\n
“He’s a good guy and a good man and I always want him to do well, obviously apart from against us and I know he’s the same.<\/p>\n
“I went to Reading this season unsure what reaction I’d get and I had a fantastic reception.<\/p>\n
“I went to Watford and it wasn’t too bad, but that period of my life has gone and we’ve both moved on.<\/p>\n
“I’ll always be grateful for them giving me the opportunity to be a manager.<\/p>\n
“It was only unique circumstances that I left.<\/p>\n
“I was delighted to see them do well last season with Malky and he is the perfect guy for them to move the club forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Swansea City and Watford go head to head at the Liberty Stadium as the Swans look for a vital home win as they push on for promotion. And standing in the opposite dugout to Brendan Rodgers will be one of his great friends – Malky Mackay – who took over from Rodgers at Watford following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}