Therefore Dave Whelan should be pardoned for trying to defend something that wasn’t any issue in the first place.
No. He still said what he said. He wasn’t talking directly about Mackay, so was still guilty of opening his mouth when he shouldn’t. More than ever it is now clear he should have kept out of it.
It also doesn’t mean that Mackay didn’t say those things either! Whichever way you look at it the ramifications of it all had a severe adverse effect on our football club and Whelan was foolhardy to take him on in the first place!
No doubt the FA will have had their lawyers crawl over it and come to the conclusion that they were on dodgy legal ground should they have imposed some kind of fine and/or ban on Mackay therefore leaving themselves open to it being challenged with a high risk of losing.
The comments by Mackay were not made in the public domain. Even though he did it on a company phone they were not intended for public consumption whereas Whelan’s comments were.