Cardiff: Malky Mackay on Friday night finally apologised in person for the racist text messages that have threatened to end his career following another day of extraordinary drama over the scandal that has rocked the game.

Mackay was forced into a second desperate bid to draw a line under the row that has already cost him and former Cardiff City colleague Iain Moody jobs with Crystal Palace, and yesterday engulfed the head of English football’s managers’ union. Thursday night’s botched apology by the League Managers Association on behalf of Mackay — in which his deeply offensive messages were described as “banter” — undermined the Scot’s fight to salvage his coaching career.

It also unleashed a wave of criticism against the union, culminating in an explosive statement from Cardiff accusing it of attempting to cover up racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic texts exchanged between their former management team before demanding the resignation of its chief executive. But Mackay had the final word after agreeing to an excruciating on camera interview in which he denied being a “bigot” but vowed to undergo diversity training.

Hinting at the acrimonious fallout with Cardiff owner Vincent Tan that has brought him to his knees, Mackay said of his conduct: “I did it in a period where I was under immense pressure and stress in terms of the relationships that were possibly not going too well at my football club at the time. But that doesn’t excuse anything and was unacceptable. “I’m a manager, I’m a leader of people and it should not have happened. But before all that and foremost, I’m a human being and I made a mistake.”

Mackay’s texts were exposed following a dawn raid on Moody’s home by investigators commissioned by Tan to look into the pair’s transfer dealings following their controversial sacking by the club. Mackay said: “Out of 10,000 text messages in and out of someone’s phone, I sent three, and that being the case, looking at them they are completely unacceptable, inappropriate and for that and for any offence I’ve caused I sincerely apologise.”

He added: “I love British football and I am no racist, I am no sexist, I am no homophobe and I am not anti-Semitic, and the people that know me know that and I do understand that it’s the people that don’t know me that I’ve got to convince of that.”

Mackay also denied instructing the LMA to include the word “banter” in the apology it issued on his behalf on Thursday, but backed its chief executive, Richard Bevan, after Cardiff dramatically called for his resignation. That was after the club accused the LMA of being “complicit” in a cover-up by failing to submit to the Football Association evidence of Mackay and Moody’s messages.

The club insisted FA rules compelled it to hand over the same material, furiously denying leaking excerpts in order to torpedo Mackay’s return to the game with Palace. It also branded the LMA’s Thursday night statement “entirely reprehensible”, claiming it made Bevan’s position “untenable”.

Cardiff broke their silence barely two hours after the LMA apologised for the “inappropriate” apology it released on behalf of Mackay the previous evening, which had provoked outrage, including among some of its own black members. The most damning claim made by Cardiff was that of an attempted cover-up by a body whose code of conduct includes a ban on discriminatory language and which is duty-bound under FA rules to “immediately” report allegations of such misconduct.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2014