There was a poll on this forum in August 2020 about whom supporters wanted to be appointed as Watford’s next manager and the most popular choice was Gerhard Struber. He is an Austrian manager who had kept Barnsley in the Championship on the last day of the season, although the 12 point deduction for Wigan helped Barnsley to survive. Barnsley were bottom of the league, seven points away from safety, when Struber joined them in November 2019 and he reinvigorated the team. They played exciting, pressing football and won some notable victories against teams near the top of the table at the end of the season. The other leading candidate to become Watford manager was Vladimir Ivic, who was eventually appointed. Watford played a dour style of football under Ivic, but he got them defensively well organized in a difficult transitional period. However, the players did not warm to his authoritarian coaching style and he was replaced by Xisco Muñoz in December 2020. I expressed some reservations about Struber at the time, but I admitted that I knew nothing about Ivic. I had followed Struber’s coaching career in Austria and I was not convinced that his appointment at Watford would be successful. One reason was because I had gained the impression that Maximilian Senft (his assistant manager) played an important role in his success at Wolfsberger AC (WAC) and his first season at Barnsley. Maximilian Senft decided to return from Barnsley to Austria for family reasons at the end of the 2019-20 season. Struber started the 2020-21 season at Barnsley without Senft and Barnsley gained only one point from their opening four Championship fixtures. Struber may not have been fully focused on Barnsley because of the links to New York Red Bulls, but that would not appear to be very professional if that were the case. Struber left Barnsley to join New York Red Bulls in October 2020, but he has not set the world alight since he arrived. New York Red Bulls lost 2-3 at home to New England Revolution (the leaders of the MLS Eastern Conference) last night. New York Red Bulls are in 9th place (out of 14 clubs) and they are 18 points behind New England Revolution. Perhaps Watford made a wise decision not to appoint Gerhard Struber – despite the shortcomings of Vladimir Ivic.
There was no Watford preseason friendly this weekend so I watched the New York Red Bulls game on Saturday night and I started to think that perhaps Gerhard Struber was not quite as good as some people thought that he was. I know that one year has passed since Struber was under consideration as a possible head coach, but Gino should be given some credit for his choices of head coach (even if he does not always get it right). Ivic - for all this faults - got Watford defensively well organized during a chaotic period (when he was forced to use many young players) and laid the foundations for Muñoz.
If there's one thing I've learned in the many years of following football it is to never listen to the fans over possible new players/managers, (especially dopey Watford fans).
Ivic did a decent job to stabilize the club at the start of the season, but Gino was smart enough to realize when a change was needed in order to ensure automatic promotion. Bringing back Quique Sánchez Flores was probably Gino's worst appointment as head coach.
There's no "probably" involved there. It was a terrible appointment. What's equally baffling to me is that so many Watford fans were calling to have him back before he was hired. QSF was awful, and our first season back was only saved by the fact that everything Iggy touched on his adrenaline fueled rush turned to goal-d for the first half of the season.
