Former Barcelona manager leading candidate to replace Unai Emery at Villarreal

According to the world famous Fabrizio Romano, the replacement for Unai Emery is very likely to be Quique Setien, formerly of FC Barcelona and Real Betis.

I will go ahead and say this right now, if this happens, do not judge your expectations of Setien’s tenure on what happened at Barcelona. That bizarre, corrupt, debt ridden, three ring circus, multi-billion euro Spotify ad masquerading as a football club was so utterly broken when he arrived that no manager on earth could have been successful. He was a victim of their organization turmoil and incompetence.

The work that got him the Barca job, at Real Betis, was far more exciting. To put things in context, understand that the season before he arrived in Seville, Betis finished 15th in La Liga with 39 points and only 41 goals scored. In his first season they finished 6th, scoring 60 goals despite losing Dani Ceballos over the summer and not making any particularly huge splashes in the transfer market. The next season was a bit less idyllic, despite bringing in the likes of Gio Lo Celso, William Carvalho, and Emerson Royal, the club could only managed 10th place, but I would argue on the whole that his tenure there was successful.

This is a manager that certainly believes in a possession based form of play that he will have the players to implement in Villarreal, while also being pragmatic enough to simply do what works. He won 64% of his matches while at FC Barcelona, a higher win rate than Ronald Koeman directly after him and much higher than Xavi currently has, and I think he will fit in well here. He does not have the cup football pedigree that Unai Emery does, but I do think he’ll put the sort of focus on league table positions that our outgoing manager never could seem to muster.

If it’s meant to be, welcome Quique.