MALKY MACKAY gives his watch a cursory glance.

There was a time when that same act carried a grave significance. It was just two years ago that the former Watford manager sat in an office furtively discussing strategies to prevent the club slipping into administration; the npower Championship side coming within two hours of that ignominious fate. Outside, supporters were clinging to hopes of their club surviving financial ruin as employees relinquished the prospect of keeping their jobs. Mackay had been in charge for just six months.

It was a cruel baptism – "My job remit had changed so that I had to sell six players to keep the books balanced," he says – but one which has steeled him against the rigours of management and informed his principles of how a club should be run. Still, it is fortunate he has since led Cardiff City to Sunday's Carling Cup final or he might have become embittered towards the whole management thing.

The chance to take on Liverpool at Wembley is one which appeals to Mackay's sense of ambition and will likely require the same level of defiance which compelled him to help rebuild Watford for a further 18 months following their darkest hour. The Scot came to represent a rare source of stability amid a turbulent period at Vicarage Road, something which is rooted in the values he adopted as a player.

As a young defender with Queen's Park, Mackay learned how to deal with adversity – "At 18, I was up against big, strong, horrible men up at Arbroath that were elbowing my teeth," says the Scot, who turned 40 last Sunday – lessons which he credits for keeping him grounded. At times they had him flat out on the turf altogether. It was part of his somewhat antiquated football education, yet it is an upbringing which has founded a relatively successful career in England.

With Cardiff ensconced in the play-off places, the ambition to gain promotion to the Barclays Premier League has added to the unique pressures of a cup final. Mackay has resisted the temptation to become introverted, though, and has watched with dismay as Rangers stumbled into administration. It is a dire situation which provokes both empathy with those at the Ibrox club and disdain towards what he perceives to be an insidious trait in modern football.

"I'm incredibly surprised, but I do think they will come back from this – there are too many wealthy fans that will make sure the club goes forward," says Mackay, who spent five years at Celtic. "But there are plenty of clubs that don't have a plan and end up with people in charge who are not fit and proper. That's a well-trodden path and is something the authorities have to look at, and I don't just mean in Scotland. They need to look at who is fit and proper to run a club, what constraints there should be.

"It used to be a group of directors, a few local businessmen who had been on the board for years. Now you have foreign ownership, and books that are closed and money that is coming from many different countries and continents. It is very boom and bust and it's what is wrecking clubs and wrecks the work done by people in them. When you see the office staff who have been at a club for 20 years then one day an administrator comes in and says 'you've lost your job, goodbye', all because of the ego of a chairman or an owner – a man who has decided to come in and make a fast buck on a football club . . ."

That assertion may have been a general one but Mackay is much more pointed when it comes to the malaise surrounding Scottish football. "The things that have happened in the past year in terms of the problems that Neil Lennon had and the situation at Rangers, it is quite incredible," he says.

"There is also always a pressure for a club to try and take on the Old Firm. Sometimes clubs get carried away with that, other clubs don't and because of that they suffer; their players leave and the crowd get on the manager's back. But they are the ones who four managers down the line are still there."