Jose Bordalas on the other hand is much more ambitious and is always looking to improve his team and himself, he is constantly pushing his players and himself to do better and that is very important in a coach. He's shown with Getafe CF that he can take a weak team and significantly improve them over time, instill new tactics and instill a fighting mentality in his players. I think what Javi Gracia lacked the most was instilling drive and fighting mentality in the players, I saw it every time Valencia CF was defending, all of our players were marking the opposition players very loosely, giving them so much space and time to work with. There was no urgency in our play, even when we were relegation threatened there was no urgency in the play at all and it showed in the results.
One of they key issues for Valencia CF was the defense, we just conceded too many goals and many of whom were just silly mistakes or unforced penalties. We were literally giving away goals to our opponents and losing points like that left and right. Jose Bordalas has shown that he is a very capable of creating a strong and rigid defense, and maybe he was forced into such a system at Getafe CF due to his players, but it was impressive how hard and fast his players pressed their opponents, forcing them into errors and lost balls.
I still think he needs quality players to be able to do his work properly, I'm not too sure on Diakhaby and his ability to fit in a 4-4-2 system, he did improve under Voro, but he was in a back line of 3 central defenders, I'm not sure he can be trusted in a central duo. Maybe he is going to pair Paulista and Hugo as that duo seems to be a bit better, but Hugo is still a very young defender and usually central defenders best performances are between the ages of 27-32.
Jose Bordalas also continued with the 4-4-2 system at Getafe CF and while he has adapted different formations at times that has been his preferred formation, though I'm not too sure if that can work with Valencia CF. I've been very impressed with the 3-5-2 or 5-3-2 whatever you want to call it that Voro put in place and I think a combination of that formation is probably going to be best for Valencia CF. We also know that Guedes works best as a sort of second striker, so if he is played on the wing in a 4-4-2 formation he is once again going to be ineffective.
So it would be interesting to see which formation Jose Bordalas decides on and if he decides on 4-4-2 if he can make it work, similar to the way Marcelino made it work for us when he was VCF's coach.
The biggest issue for the coach is going to be Peter Lim as it has been for most of our coaches, will he deliver on his promises to this coach, will he interfere with the squad and players, etc... Because with Javi Gracia he was promised certain players and he never received those, while many players were sold or gifted away left and right. In essence last season was a transitional one and I don't think any coach would have been able to muster a position in the top 8. I think the best last years team could have done is probably 9th or at the very best 8th place, but it would have barely been able to achieve that. Now that we've transitioned from that and we have some established players from last season it would be easier to choose the right players and right combination.
So in a way I think Jose Bordalas has an easier job this time around compared to Javi Gracia, that is unless Peter Lim has a sellout like last season and decides to sell our best players like Guedes, Gaya, etc...