Xisco Munoz

It really wouldn’t surprise me if it was Benitez, if Gino has learned one thing from all this maybe it’s that you can’t treat the managers job as if it’s a Ryanair or easyJet pilot. I don’t think the wages in themselves would be an issue, after all look what Troy and Andre earn and contribute. The issue would be length of contract, let’s say (random figure) RB wanted £3m a year on a 3 year deal, Gino isn’t going to want to be on the hook for £9m with the frequency he dispatches managers. If he can get the usual two year deal with a one year break clause I can’t see the actual wages being an issue, especially with all the failures Gino’s had and compo he’s had to fork out over the years. The question is though why would a decent manager accept such a deal? Either way maybe it’s time Gino actually bit the bullet and appointed a proven top tier manager?

 

.....except that in about 9 years he has continued to do just that, this season too, and his latest Easyjet appointment, ridiculed initially, seems to have been a stellar success.
It would be great to get Benitez on a 3 year deal with a reduced package if/when we are relegated, with Munoz to work alongside him.

 

What would it do to the morale of the players if he was sacked, I wonder.

 

We will go up and sack him, obviously.

 

I appreciate the irony in that in so much as that’s exactly what he’d be doing to Munoz.

That said, if it was to be Benitez and Munoz is indeed staying on, you have to question why would he be staying on? Surely it’s to be groomed as the manager within a pre-determined timeline, say 2 years, or whenever Benitez is sacked, whichever comes sooner.

Would that not be just about the perfect scenario? Munoz gets to be one of, if not the only pozzo manager that finishes the job on a high, he avoid the indignity of getting bounced out of the club in October on a sour note, he gets to learn from a master and is given all the tools to succeed when he eventually takes over anyway. If he then fails, well he would’ve failed anyway but sooner, if he doesn’t then we gave him the best possible chance to succeed.

It seems just about the best possible compromise to me.

 

Excellent point. It's not as though he heaped praise on Deeney, shoehorned the whole squad into a formation to get Deeney into the team and let him play on even though he was injured and only changed things when Deeney was finally ruled out for an extended period, is it?

 

Where has it come from that Munoz is Benitez’s ‘mate’? Surely he just played for him at Valencia and says he was a good manager and learnt a lot from him.

 

Yes me too. I just wonder whether Munoz would be prepared to drop back to being a #2. I guess it depends on his immediate responsibilities and what the mapped future career path is for him.

 

This is pretty much what I was thinking 19tgg when I suggested the scenario.

 

I don't really know how I feel about him staying or going, but regardless he'll be one of the most in demand managers in the championship now when no one would have heard of him before. At the very least we've given him a huge springboard in his career.

 

Rafa also contacted Xisco in order to congratulate him when he was appointed as head coach at Watford. However, it still does not mean that Munoz is Benitez’s ‘mate’.

 

I think Benitez and Xisco is a fantasy. It's one thing to attract someone of Benitez's profile, but encouraging Munoz to take a step back AND wait years for a chance is cloud cuckoo land stuff. Especially when Pozzo managers have such a short shelf life.

 

I think we should offer Deeney to Birmingham and subsidize his wages. They did us a favour.

 

But that may have been the deal all along? After all the initial leak suggested he was coming in as an assistant manager. Whose to say Munoz wouldn’t prefer that, rather than being out of a job after 10 games of next season.

 

I certainly wouldn't complain if it happened. Still, who in their right-mind would expect us to keep the same manager for long enough to enable this plan to come to fruition?

 

Exactly. By the time August comes Pozzo will be three managers down the line and Benitez ain't gonna team up with whoever the lucky dip spits out.

 

Most, myself included, thought Gino had appointed the first available 'yes man' after sacking Ivic. Maybe he did and got lucky? Either way, Xisco's record has been nothing short of phenomenal.

I started this thread to gauge opinion on Xisco and whether we think he's the man to take us forward. I certainly think he deserves a chance. Doubt whether GP will be thinking the same way.

 

What did Birmingham ever do to us to deserve that millstone?

 

I have done my badges up to UEFA level B and from what I can remember a lot of it is about how to coach which makes it difficult in some respects as everybody has their own way of doing things. That's not to say it wasn't very useful and I still do things that I was told to this day. What i don't understand though is why when you've done the level I have there is one required to coach in the Premier League. What would Xisco get from this course. Maybe @reids might know as he works in the footballing world?

 

Am I missing something, wouldn’t the plan be that Benitez would be in charge from the first game next season, with Munoz working alongside him?

 

Mine was just a lame attempt at a joke. I think Folkestone’s point is if the plan is to wait until Munoz has his badges it only works if Benitez is able to stay as headline act long enough for that to happen.

 

Ah right, sorry I misunderstood.

I would’ve thought that if Benitez is appointed, with his pedigree then as long as we aren’t in the relegation zone then we’ll stick with him and possibly stick with him longer than we might have with other managers, especially on the assumption he’ll want a bigger contract than our normal targets.

The flip side to that is that if Benitez is our manager and we’re in the relegation zone or fighting relegation, that’s more than likely going to be because we haven’t strengthened properly rather than his abilities as a manager, which have been well proven over the years.

 

I think it was the joke of a (non) pre-season that screwed us.

 

I agree that I think it is extremely unlikely that Munoz is not aware that he is currently not qualified to be head coach of a side in the EPL. So he accepted the job & the challenge fully aware of the implications of that.

 

I said it earlier and I’ll repeat it: I simply can’t imagine the EPL would force us to part ways with/demote an obviously otherwise qualified and accomplished coach who would have just achieved a fairly unlikely promotion with the perhaps the best PPG of any manager in the Championship in the last ten years or so because of this coaching base provision they’ve never previously applied as stringently. They let clubs hire new coaches (Southgate, Grant, and also Paul Ince at Blackburn) so surely they would give dispensation for a club to retain their already in place coach. I just struggle to imagine this is a hill for the PL to die on. What’s more, while I thought the COVID excuse mooted by Leventhal seems a bit woolly, it does appear that a lot of the coaching courses have been put on hold during the pandemic so maybe that would be a fairly strong argument for dispensation alongside the simpler common sense ‘don’t force us to sack our promotion-wining manager’ argument.

That said, I could totally envisage us hiding behind the badges thing so that we don’t have to look disloyal and ruthless should Gino decide to go in a different direction. No bad headlines for us and Munoz will have his pick of championship sides to manage while he gets his badges. But if we don’t want it to be a problem, it won’t be.

 

Nope, I believe the same, I don't think there should be a requirement of a specific badge at any level, especially the PL. What can a course teach you about managing in the PL compared to what you'll have likely done already in your journey up to that step?

 

Just get Alan ("could do a job") Pardew in to oversee and teach him.

 

The simple and sad truth is there are people who have been against him from day one. Because he wasn’t a big name maybe, or didn’t come with a long CV.

The day he was appointed, I read on here that he had ‘three matches to keep his job’.

On Twitter I read an eminent poster on here often refer to him as the worst coach we’ve ever had.

Criticism was everywhere.

Fast forward a few weeks and his record now stands at played 20, won 14, drawn 3, lost 3.

We are on the verge of achieving something under him that few thought possible not so long ago. Hell even I wavered temporarily after the Coventry match.

I hope when we clinch promotion in a fortnights time that he gets all the praise he deserves for a stunning introduction to English football.

 

That was perfectly reasonable, normal and to be expected.

 

Disagree with reasonable, but fully agree with the normal and to be expected, especially in the context of this forum.

 

He'll get a year extension and will get sacked at some point next season, probably within the first 10 or so games. It will be impossible to keep this current squad up without some heavy investment, which I doubt we can afford to do.

 

He's been nominated for Manager of the Month for March

https://www.watfordfc.com/news/news-munoz-sierralta-nominated-for-march-sky-bet-championship-awards

 

I think it was more than reasonable to question the appointment of someone who’d managed a handfull of games in Georgia. There isn’t anything sad about it, it’s an entirely normal reaction that you’d get from any sane fan of any club in the country.

 

I would be very disappointed if Xisco isn't allowed to have a crack at next Season. Highly likeable and got the squad harmonised which is easier said than done. As cliché as it is, team spirit does matter and has started to see his style of play take hold which is what we were told we would see during his stint in Georgia.

 

I don't want to downplay Xisco's work on this front - but we know it was Troost-Ekong who got the squad together and thats when skulls were cracked together and this new team bond started to form. Xisco's affable manner certainly helps but I do wonder if we overstate how much the team spirit is down to him purely because he was an opposite to Ivic's 'misery-guts' persona.