Why Leeds United turned to ‘street smart’ Javi Gracia and what to expect - The Athletic 21/2/23

Phil Hay and Adam Leventhal

The interview and presentation given by Javi Gracia to Leeds United focused heavily on the club’s recent matches, but in the time he had to prepare, he spent some of it picking over Chelsea’s defeat to Southampton last Saturday. Gracia offered ideas about where Leeds were going wrong and how they might improve quickly, but alongside that, he wanted the hierarchy at Elland Road to see how ready he was for their biggest game of the season by a mile.

Southampton are at Elland Road this weekend, 19th against 20th in the Premier League and a fixture of such high pressure that Leeds could not expect Michael Skubala, their under-21s coach, to bear the weight of it. As of this time last week, Skubala was caretaker for “upcoming fixtures” — which, without saying so in as many words, meant Everton and Southampton as a minimum, but the failure to lay a glove on Everton at Goodison Park over the weekend brought Leeds’ dire position into the sharpest of focus. Their fraught hunt for a new head coach got going again, ending at Gracia’s door.

Skubala will remain close to the first team as part of the coaching team Gracia is putting together at Thorp Arch, but Everton made the penny drop with Leeds. There was a big difference between throwing Skubala two back-to-back games against Manchester United in the space of five days and burdening him with the responsibility of actually fending off relegation.

Contact was made with Gracia in the 48 hours after the clash at Goodison Park and he presented to the club’s board, including officials from 49ers Enterprises, in time to travel to England on Monday. His review of Southampton’s 1-0 win at Chelsea was an attempt to convince them that he was up to speed for the immediate obstacle in front of him.

Gracia, 52 and out of work since a spell managing in Qatar ended last year, is well-travelled and worked in the Premier League for 18 months at Watford from January 2018. His status as a free agent made him easy to court and he was not demanding in negotiations in Leeds, seemingly happy to prove himself in the short term and then discuss the long term.

His reign at Vicarage Road was typical of the managerial circus Watford have been under owner Gino Pozzo. In the 2018-19 season, Watford finished 11th — their best in the Premier League — and made it to the FA Cup final. Gracia was sacked four league games into the following term. But what got his foot in the door in the first place, as successor to Marco Silva in January 2018, was his success in keeping relegation at arm’s length.

Leeds took note of that, although these, it should be said, are not identical circumstances at Elland Road. Five years ago, Gracia was given a Watford squad who were 10th in the Premier League, albeit only six points off the bottom of a congested table. They had lost half of their 24 games, a record that caused the rarely patient Pozzos to give up on Silva, whose flirting with Everton had caused a breakdown in the relationship. Gracia steered the club to 41 points and 14th place, well clear of trouble before the closing weeks of the campaign. In his autobiography, Redemption, former Watford striker Troy Deeney, the club’s captain back then, described Gracia as savvy and “street smart”.

“He had the experience to realise that in the situation we were in, midway through a season, he couldn’t do anything radical,” Deeney wrote. “But he made important improvements nonetheless.”

Others at Watford had the same impression of Gracia. Another prominent figure, who asked not to be identified following the Pozzos’ decision to dismiss Gracia in September 2019, said he created a “positive atmosphere, on the training pitch and away from it” with the help of a solid identity. Gracia had his philosophy as a coach and communicated it clearly. Watford’s crowd had time for him, too. When the Pozzos sacked him it was not a case of supporters chasing him out of Vicarage Road. Many saw the move as thoroughly ruthless.

Gracia, who started on a rolling contract but soon earned a four-and-a-half-year deal, was settled in England by that stage. He had bought a house in Hemel Hempstead and his children went to school locally. Adrian Mariappa, one of his defenders, found his exit baffling. “I was never a fan of changing managers every time something gets hard,” Mariappa told The Athletic. “I always felt Javi would have turned it around. You need to give someone a fair crack of the whip. There are times when things can’t be saved but four games into a season is premature.”

The club’s then-technical director in 2019, Filippo Giraldi, echoed that opinion. “My view — not a club view — is that we should have given him more time,” Giraldi said.

In his one full term as boss, Gracia’s team were lively and competitive, securely lodged in mid-table. Their FA Cup final appearance was achieved through a remarkable 3-2 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers in the semi-final at Wembley, a game in which Watford had trailed 2-0 after 79 minutes. Gerard Deulofeu, whom Gracia controversially dropped to the bench, appeared on 66 minutes and made an impact with an extraordinary curling first and then, after Troy Deeney’s equalising penalty in the last minute, an extra-time winner. “My two years with Javi were amazing,” Deulofeu told The Athletic in March 2021.

Watford, back then, had a strong group of professionals including Richarlison, Roberto Pereyra, Etienne Capoue and Abdoulaye Doucoure. Deeney was a vocal captain who led the line and kept the dressing room on message. The club loaned Deulofeu from Barcelona before the end of the January window in which Gracia was appointed and would subsequently make that signing permanent. In all, Gracia had the quality to deliver his initial target of staying up.

The squad at Leeds is not devoid of ability or potential and, in many ways, it looks stronger and more capable on paper than it has been on the pitch this season, but Gracia is taking charge of a side who are badly out of the habit of winning. Leeds have four league victories all season and, rather aptly, have not recorded one since Bonfire Night. Far from the comparatively luxurious six-point cushion Gracia had at the outset at Watford, Leeds are two points adrift of 17th place.

What, then, is Gracia’s identity? And how is he likely to approach the challenge of turning Leeds into a team with enough nous, cohesion and understanding to reach the point of safety in May?

Gracia is regarded as a calm and reserved coach, humble and courteous and not prone to outbursts. His off-the-ball ideas at Watford were fairly conventional in a modern sense: plenty of high-intensity running, good levels of pressing and a commitment to holding a relatively high line up the pitch, with a firm emphasis on work rate.

Ironically, given the results that led Leeds to sack Jesse Marsch this month, Gracia was not averse to employing his own form of the 4-2-2-2 system which Marsch worked on in his Red Bull days and used from time to time at Elland Road. Watford, with the Spaniard in place, moved away from the 3-4-3 formation favoured by Silva and used a mix of 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 formations in the opening phase of his tenure.

Gracia relied on a midfield base created by Capoue and Doucoure and would eventually deploy them in a double-six combination, with Pererya and Will Hughes in front of them. Pereya and Hughes often formed a narrow box midfield behind what was effectively a partnership of Deeney and Deulofeu up front. It could be deemed a 4-4-2 setup, but in the flesh, it often appeared more like 4-2-2-2.

While Doucoure and Capoue were more than sitting anchors — encouraged to get forward and set off counter-attacks — Hughes, a left-footer on the right, and Pereyra, a right-footer on the left, albeit comfortable with both, were inverted and would tuck in and rotate. Gracia encouraged his full-backs to get forward and contribute offensively, especially if the midfield was narrow. At Leeds, Gracia will find players who lend themselves to similar tactics. The trick for him will be to make them less frenetic and less chaotic than they were under Marsch — and as a result, more effective. He has 15 games to go at but, all the same, not necessarily the time to make vast alterations.

Gracia’s 20-month tenure at Watford is, to date, the longest of any coach during the Pozzo era, a regime which has been in control for more than a decade. His performance was undeserving of the way he was sacked. Though Watford had taken only one point from their first four games of the 2019-20 season, he took training during the August international break, said goodbye to his players on the Friday and expected to see them again on Monday. He was fired via a phone call to his agent while he was picking up his kids from school, without any warning.

Gracia spent a short while in his Spanish hometown of Pamplona afterwards, reflecting on the decision. He made a concerted effort to say little about it in public, to avoid causing problems as Watford battled to get their season in order. “I like to empathise with all the people,” Gracia remarked in a later interview with The Athletic. “I understand that you try to change, you change the manager. You try to change the dynamic of everything and you have to be really clear and sometimes these are difficult decisions. It’s football and you have to accept it.”

Gracia’s coaching career has taken him from place to place without him sticking anywhere for too long but certain high-profile stints, such as managing a young Malaga side in 2014, delivered what was expected of him, if not more. Valencia employed him after his departure from Watford and though that period did not go well, Gracia’s view was that he had been sold a false dream by Valencia’s owner, Peter Lim. Key players left after Gracia’s appointment and the signings he anticipated, or was told to expect, did not materialise. Gracia tried to resign but remained in position after being informed he would have to pay around £3million ($3.6m) to activate his own release clause. He was sacked without completing a full term, with Valencia six points above La Liga’s relegation places.

From there it was on to Al Sadd in Qatar, where Gracia won the league title last year but, for him, England is a return to the heart of European football.

Leeds were in no position to pretend to him that he was their standout choice to replace Marsch, but a search that started with Rayo Vallecano’s Andoni Iraola as the club’s prime target boiled down to pragmatism after Saturday’s defeat to Everton left Leeds staring into the abyss.

They are counting on Gracia’s experience being enough to get them out of the woods and his presentation to them sealed the deal. The first test of it is on the horizon: the high-stakes challenge of putting into practice his ideas of how to edge a must-win game against Southampton.