(Football news) Having guided Watford to an 11th place Premier League finish as well as an FA Cup final, the clubs best season in decades, the Spanish football manager was sacked just a few months later and was replaced by Quique Sanchez Flores just 30 minutes after the announcement. Watford were at the risk of relegation when Javi Gracia took over but produced enough results to help his team finish 14th in the league, eight points clear from the drop zone. With Richarlison’s departure in the summer, many expected Watford to succeed the following season, instead Gracia surpassed every expectation.
It’s no secret that Javi Gracia was not Leeds’ first choice manager following Jesse Marsch’s departure. However, the Spaniard brings considerable experience, having been in charge of 12 different clubs in five countries. At Malaga, Gracia secured back-to-back top-10 finishes despite being on a tight budget and managed to take points off Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid in the process. Gracia’s former teammate and current Aston Villa manager Unai Emery said “Above all, his teams are very organised, with a big commitment to helping each other”.
Under Marsch, Leeds were too open, too easy to beat and too vulnerable to the threat of relegation. However, the team doesn’t lack effort as they rank third among Premier League sides for distance covered this season behind Tottenham and Manchester City while only Newcastle United have more sprints. The problem lies in the fact that the effort was not being channelled the right way and this is where Javi Gracia could prove to be a shrewd appointment. The Spaniard is meticulously analytical and tactically intelligent and could make his team hard to beat with his defensive minded approach.
During an interview as Watford manager in the 2018/19 season, Javi Gracia said “My mission as a manager is to get the best out of the players that I have, and you have to adapt to do that. I can’t take over a team and say, ‘No, I want to play like this, I like to play 4-3-3 and I am always going to play 4-3-3’. That is not what a good manager does.
“Of course, I like to have possession. I like attacking football. But there is no attacking football if you don’t defend well or you don’t apply that to the whole team. That balance is necessary to compete and to win. So, I think you have to be flexible and see what characteristics your players have. You have to know how to face every team and be able to adapt to different situations.”
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