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Who is Javi Gracia? Introducing Marco Silva's successor at Watford

Yegor Aleyev / TASS / Getty

The Pozzos are pretty good at this hiring and firing malarkey.

Watford picked Javi Gracia as its 10th managerial hire since the Pozzo family took over the club in 2012. Sunday's appointment was made merely hours after Marco Silva was surprisingly shown the door by the Vicarage Road brass.

Related: Watford names Javi Gracia new manager

Gracia began his playing career at Athletic Bilbao in the late-80s, but was on his way out of the club when Jupp Heynckes was unveiled as manager in 1992. The defensive midfielder rebuilt his career at second-tier UE Lleida, inspiring the Catalonians to promotion into La Liga in his first season, and then showed off his top-tier credentials at Valladolid. The longest stop throughout his time in football is a four-year Real Sociedad stint, where his bosses included the well-travelled Javier Irureta. He moved to Villarreal in 1999, where he earned another ascent from the second rung, and then wound down at Cordoba in 2003-04.

The move into coaching was quick. Former Manchester City overseer Manuel Pellegrini was an early influence, with Gracia serving as youth-team coach while the Chilean led Villarreal's senior squad to the Champions League semi-finals. Gracia then boosted his experience in lower-level jobs and spells further afield in Greece, before steering UD Almeria into La Liga in 2013 and spending a year at Osasuna. He was picked up by Malaga in 2014, assuming the mantle Pellegrini vacated two years prior.

(Photo courtesy: Getty Images)

His reputation blossomed in Andalusia through his assembling of a well-organised and hard-working team despite being stripped of Ruud van Nistelrooy, Santi Cazorla, Isco, and many others in the two years preceding his appointment. Gracia put his trust in young players to stabilise the club, and can be credited with improving Sergi Darder, Nordin Amrabat, Pablo Fornals, and Nordin Amrabat.

"There's a little cluster of desks there, papers and laptops, DVDs, statistics, whiteboards on the wall," the Guardian's Sid Lowe detailed of his old training-ground base in Malaga in February 2016. "He's there by eight each morning and still there at eight at night, preparing matches still a month away. Then he goes home and watches football matches. He analyses everything; he can no longer help it."

When he had his head turned by Rubin Kazan's riches in 2016 - merely two months after signing a new deal with Malaga - Lowe bemoaned the loss of "one of the best coaches in Spain." Guillem Balague describes him as a "meticulous, strong personality, tactically savvy" operator. Gracia led Malaga to eighth- and ninth-placed finishes in La Liga.

Although he was unable to arrest Rubin Kazan's decline and finished ninth in his single Russian Premier League term, Gracia was warmly welcomed back to Malaga where he lived with his family. The 47-year-old's name is unblemished in homeland despite his communication difficulties in Russia, and he was linked to the Sevilla post last summer.

"If an opportunity came up again in Russia then I would have to say no but if it was somewhere else then that would be good," he told Sky Sports' Adam Bate in October 2017. "I think maybe after my last experience in Russia I would prefer for the next opportunity to come here in Spain, but I do not rule out going abroad again because I think there are many places where I can enjoy my job."

A language barrier won't be an issue in Watford as he speaks English, but there will be concern that the ex-Spanish youth international has never lasted more than two years in a coaching gig. Stability for the Hornets may still be a pipe dream for supporters.

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