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Patience Is a Virtue in the Premier League. Isn’t It?

Peter Powell/EPA, via Shutterstock

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The Premier League season was only a few weeks old when, in the middle of a quiet Saturday evening, Watford revealed that it had fired its manager, Javi Gracia. He would be replaced, the club said, by his countryman Quique Sánchez Flores, who had himself been fired by Watford three years earlier.

This was, in the eyes of most observers, the madness of modern soccer boiled down to its very essence.