"I'm nowhere near the end of my career," he says, "but I don't exactly have years to waste either."
"Everyone comes to a point in their career where they've got big decisions to make," McCartney says. "For the first time I was in a position where I wanted to play football week in, week out and had no chance of doing that, not at Sunderland anyway.
"I reported back for pre-season and heard a lot of reports, a lot of rumours, saying the manager (Steve Bruce) knew which players he wanted to keep. I realised that I wasn't one of them and I'd probably known that through the second half of last season.
"I'd gone back to Sunderland from West Ham feeling that I had unfinished business at Sunderland but I have to be honest and say it hasn't worked out.
"I wasn't happy and I wasn't enjoying training. In a strange way, I'd lost my appetite for the game – and that's something I thought I'd never say.
"When you're knocking on towards 30, you want to play as many games as you can. You're past the midway point of your career and it's not a stage where you can afford waste time or throw months away.
"When that happens, you need a change of scene and a change of club – something to pick you up. Leeds gave me the opportunity at a time when
I really needed it."
"We beat Sheffield United on my debut and I thought 'Leeds are a team. I'm in with some good players here'," McCartney recalls.
"Then we had that shocking night against Preston. Strange doesn't really describe it. I don't think I'll ever play in the game like that again.
"As for Cardiff, they came here in form and turned us over. It was that simple. But it didn't have any effect on me wanting to stay. I'd already made up my mind about that.
"That night was hard, don't get me wrong, and you did start to wonder if we should forget about the play-offs and worry about staying up but I was still in a good frame of mind and very motivated.
"That all feels like a long time ago now.
"As soon as we got a settled team, things clicked into place. It wasn't just that we went 13 or 14 games without defeat, it was that we went on that run without riding our luck too much. The team played pretty well right the way through it.
"Getting games was my first aim but being in a team who are in form was my second. It's a bonus to end up with both.
"We're probably passed the point of saying 'don't talk about the play-offs.' At the very least, they're within our expectations. The top two's not out of the question either.
"But everyone here is quite happy to be in the background. This is one of those seasons where you'll only be certain about the league table when the last game's played."
"Before I left in December, I spoke with Simon and he told me that he wanted to get something sorted as quickly as possible," McCartney says.
"I really hoped we'd be done straight away but it all dragged on for a couple of weeks. I think Sunderland were probably holding out for a bit
more money and started to think it wasn't going to happen.
"It was quite a worrying time because I felt like I might be heading back to the position I'd been in before.
"I'm aware of what went on (at Leeds) in the past financially and I didn't expect them to be stupid with their money, but I was very relieved to see them come to an agreement."
"I hadn't been playing at club level and to miss out with Northern Ireland was a consequence of that," he says. "The two go hand in hand.
"I wasn't considered for two or three matches and it's another thing which makes you look at yourself closely and ask what's going wrong.
"There were a couple of others options when I first signed for Leeds,
Leicester and Derby or something like that. But I didn't mess about and I didn't give them much thought.
"I knew people here and I liked what they were telling me. To be honest, I'd have missed out on a great move if I hadn't come."
http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/leedsunited/Leeds-United-Whites-handed-me.6711418.jp
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