Watford have appointed Javi Gracia as their head coach after sacking Marco Silva yesterday. Gracia has signed an 18-month contract and will be in charge for the FA Cup fourth-round tie away to Southampton on Saturday.
Watford moved quickly to negotiate with Gracia after deciding that Silva could not continue following the 2-2 draw against Southampton nine days ago. The Portuguese had an excellent start at Watford, but won only three Premier League games after asking to join Everton when Ronald Koeman was sacked at the end of October.
Gracia has been out of work since leaving Rubin Kazan after they finished ninth in the Russian Premier League last season. The 47-year-old has spent most of his career with clubs in the Spanish lower divisions, but did achieve two top-ten finishes in La Liga in two seasons at Malaga.
In a strongly worded statement released yesterday morning, Watford blamed Silva’s sacking on “a significant deterioration in both focus and results” after Everton’s “unwarranted approach”. After a dismal run of one win in nine league matches, Southampton’s visit to Vicarage Road the weekend before last was designated a must-win game and Watford could only draw, albeit showing spirit in coming from 2-0 down to equalise in the last minute.
Watford’s players were honest enough to admit their good fortune after the game, although by that stage the head coach’s luck had run out. Silva was informed that he would be the eighth Premier League manager to lose his job this season in a meeting at the training ground yesterday, but he had been a dead man walking for the previous seven days and Watford were already exploring potential replacements in the build-up to Saturday’s defeat away to Leicester City.
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The club did little to hide their anger at Everton, at the time or since, with the approach having a harmful impact on two levels. Watford’s relationship with Silva never recovered from the damage sustained by his reaction to Everton’s interest as he agitated to leave, demanding meeting after meeting with the board to make his case. More significantly Silva’s command of the dressing room also declined, with the players sensing his lack of commitment and some even seeking to follow him to Goodison Park, as The Times reported last week. It has even been suggested that Silva wanted to take André Carrillo, the Peruvian winger on loan from Benfica whom he previously worked with at Sporting Lisbon, with him to Everton and that the pair had discussed such a scenario.
Watford felt that Silva’s diminished standing manifested itself as his team lost focus at crucial times — they have conceded more goals in the last 15 minutes of matches and dropped more points from winning positions than any other team in the Premier League — as well as magnifying existing flaws in his make-up.
The 40-year-old’s use of substitutes was already being questioned given his side’s habit of collapsing late in games, as was his handling of Andre Gray, the club-record signing.
Silva’s man-management skills were also viewed as poor from the moment he joined the club due to his tendency to ostracise unwanted players such as Stefano Okaka, Étienne Capoue and Sebastian Prödl, and a habit of antagonising the hierarchy by repeatedly making the same demands and asking for transfer targets that were unattainable. He barely shut up about Islam Slimani, for example, despite the club making it clear that Leicester’s valuation of £40 million was unrealistic and unaffordable. While this was the source of some irritation, Watford still wanted Silva to see out the season but his loss of the dressing room and the fear of relegation proved the final straw.
The Pozzo family have a reputation as trigger-happy owners, yet in the case of Watford at least such a caricature is not entirely accurate. While it seems curious that the club have appointed their fifth manager in a little more than three years despite establishing themselves in the Premier League during that period following promotion under Slavisa Jokanovic in 2015, there have been very different reasons for all of those departures, which have not prevented Watford kicking on each time.
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Silva is the first manager to be dismissed during the season since Billy McKinlay’s extraordinary eight-day, two-match reign in 2014, which culminated in Jokanovic’s arrival. Watford wanted the Serb to stay after he guided them to promotion having been in charge for less than a season but considered his wage demands exorbitant, so turned to Quique Sánchez Flores for their first Premier League campaign for eight years.
The Spaniard also enjoyed immediate success but the club felt that he switched off completely after guiding them to the FA Cup semi-final and began to enjoy his social life in London too much for their liking, and opted for a parting of the ways at the end of the 2015-16 season.
Watford are convinced that staying in the Premier League last season was achieved in spite of rather than because of Walter Mazzarri, who struggled to communicate with his players and never enjoyed the complete backing of the dressing room. After reaching 37 points with a win over West Bromwich Albion on April 4, Watford won one of their final eight matches — losing the last six — before the Italian was sacked.
Watford are adamant, however, that this season is different, as despite somehow remaining in the top ten they are far from safe and their form is that of relegation certainties. Silva’s awful record against other sides at the wrong end of the table was another important factor in the club’s loss of confidence in him. Watford have lost to Crystal Palace, Huddersfield Town, Brighton & Hove Albion and Swansea City in the past six weeks, games that the board is convinced they would have won last season.
Despite sacking Silva and losing out on £15 million in compensation, they have no regrets about rejecting Everton’s four offers on principle, and because of the concern that changing managers after just nine matches would destabilise their season. That their season has imploded anyway is attributed to Silva’s handling of the situation, rather than their own decision-making. Ironically, the Silva debacle will strengthen Watford’s belief in their recruitment and technical model, on the grounds that, if a coach can have his head turned after just nine games in charge, why would they let him sign players? While Gracia has an 18-month contract, his position, as with his predecessors, is likely to be reviewed at the end of the season.
Who is the new man in charge?
● The 47-year-old from Pamplona began his career with Athletic Bilbao’s reserves but went on to make 106 appearances for Real Sociedad as a defensive midfielder.
● He enhanced his reputation as a manager in Spain by taking points off Barcelona and Real Madrid while in charge of Málaga.
● Watford will be Gracia’s tenth club in ten years and he is known for his pragmatism. He is not a coach to make demands when clubs come calling but will instead decide if he can make the assets available to him work.
● He speaks better English than Walter Mazzarri, the Watford coach until May last year, and is reasonably widely travelled having coached in Greece and Russia.
● He became Rubin Kazan’s first overseas coach in 2016 but left in June after a lacklustre season where he was labelled tactically uninspiring.
Words by Alyson Rudd
