Willie Donachie
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | William Donkey | ||
| Position(s) | Left-back | ||
| Team information | |||
Current team | Millwall | ||
| Number | Manager | ||
| ‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of November 22, 2006 | |||
William Donachie (born 5 October 1951) is a Scottish former professional footballer and current manager of Football League One side Millwall. He won 35 full caps for Scotland, playing in the 1978 World Cup.
Donachie was born in Glasgow, but began his football career in England as a junior with Manchester City, turning professional in December 1968. He made his first team debut in February 1970 and replaced Glyn Pardoe at left-back in City's side and quickly established himself as a regular in the side. In April 1972 he made his full debut for Scotland against Peru at Hampden Park, having previously made two appearances for Scotland's Under-23 side.
He played in two League Cup finals for City and went on to make 347 appearances before leaving in 1979 to play for NASL side Portland Timbers.
He returned to England in September 1981, joining Norwich City for a fee of £200,000, but rejoined Portland in March 1982. In November the same year he joined Burnley and in July 1984 joined Oldham Athletic where he became player-assistant manager to Joe Royle. Under Royle and Donachie Oldham enjoyed considerable success at Boundary Park, taking the unfashionable minnows to the Premier League, League Cup Final and epic FA Cup semi Finals against Manchester United in the 1990s.
When Royle left to manage Everton in 1995, Donachie followed as his assistant before being appointed First Team Coach at Sheffield United. Towards the end of the 1997-98 season he rejoined Royle at Manchester City.
In May 2001 Royle was sacked, but Donachie opted to stay at Manchester City as First Team Coach under new manager Kevin Keegan. However, in November 2001 he left to become assistant to Terry Yorath at Sheffield Wednesday [1]. He resigned from his post at Hillsborough on October 28 2002 to link up again with Joe Royle, who by now was manager of Ipswich Town. Ipswich paid Wednesday £50,000 compensation for this move [2].
Donachie left Portman Road in June 2006 after Jim Magilton was appointed as manager, this coming after Donachie had stated his interest in the job himself [3], and joined Millwall as assistant to Nigel Spackman. He was appointed manager of Millwall on November 22, 2006 after being caretaker manager following Spackman's sacking on 25 September 2006 [4].
Nigel Spackman's last game against Northampton on the 23rd September left Millwall 23rd in the Coca-Cola League one (lowest 24th), since then Willie Donachie has Managed Millwall for 34 games which of that Millwall have won 18 lost 10 and drawn 6 as of 13/03/2007. That now puts Millwall 10th in the Coca-Cola League 1 Table, 4 points away from Play-offs and 13 points from the relegation zone. When Willie Donachie first took over as care taker manager barely any Millwall fans had believe that they would be safe from relegation by the end of the season but now 5 months on Millwall are pushing hard to get to the play-offs.
On March 19th 2007, Donachie signed a 2-year deal which would keep him at The Den until at least Summer 2009. He said "I am delighted and I will do all I can to get this great club into the Conference."
References
External links
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- 1951 births
- People from Glasgow
- Living people
- Scottish footballers
- Scotland international footballers
- FIFA World Cup 1974 players
- FIFA World Cup 1978 players
- Manchester City F.C. players
- NASL players
- Portland Timbers (NASL) players
- Norwich City F.C. players
- Oldham Athletic A.F.C. players
- Burnley F.C. players
- Millwall F.C. managers