Fran Escriba is out as coach, Javi Calleja replaces him

Fallout was swift from our 4-0 drubbing at Getafe. Fran Escriba is no longer coach of Villarreal CF; he was let go after the club returned to Vila-real. The club has acted swiftly to appoint Javi Calleja as his replacement. Calleja has done a great job with our youth teams, and had gotten off to a good start with our B team (they defeated Cornella 2-0 yesterday and are in the promotion places) but this is a big promotion for someone with no experience of coaching in the “big leagues”.

Calleja obviously has impressed Villarreal brass with his handling of players; beginning your first-team coaching career with a trip to Israel for a Europa League match is an interesting way to begin.

I’m somewhat surprised that Sr. Roig acted so quickly to make this change—not because it wasn’t deserved or desired (a twitter poll yesterday showed over 80% of fans thought Escribá should go) but because we have an international break coming up shortly and that would have seemed a logical place to make a change.

Escribá leaves Villarreal this season with only seven points from six matches, and the only season we did worse was 2011-12 with six from our first six, and we all know what happened then. Let’s not forget he coached us to a fifth place last year, 67 points, our best result point-wise except for the 77 points in 2007-08.