Watford legend Gibbs takes job at Championship rival.

This season, Watford will face one of their all-time greats in the opposition dugout, as Nigel Gibbs has been named as West Bromwich Albion’s assistant head coach. The defender, who made nearly 500 appearances for the Hornets, is reuniting with his old Tottenham colleague Ryan Mason, who was appointed head coach at The Hawthorns earlier this week. Gibbs, 59, is a very experienced coach who built on his fantastic career at Vicarage Road, which began as a teenager, saw him make his UEFA Cup debut in 1983, and remained a dedicated one-club man until retiring in 2002.

After hanging up his boots, he spent time coaching Watford’s junior and reserve teams before earning his UEFA Pro Licence. After leaving Watford, Gibbs joined Reading as youth manager in 2006 before becoming assistant manager in 2009. He collaborated with Brian McDermott at Reading and Leeds, where they gained promotion to the Premier League as champions with the Royals in 2011/12.

The former England youth international then spent a few years as Millwall’s first-team coach before heading across London to Spurs as their under-19 coach in 2016. He had brief spells at Swansea, Reading, and Portsmouth before returning to White Hart Lane in July 2019 as head of player development for the under-17s and under-23s. Gibbs aided Mason while he was in interim charge of Tottenham’s first team.

Last September, he spent a brief spell in Greece with Asteras Tripolis under ex-Swansea colleague Claude Makelele, before joining League One Reading in December as first-team coach under Noel Hunt and helping the Berkshire club finish the season strongly. Mason hired Gibbs at the same time that he added sports scientist Sam Pooley, another former Tottenham player, to his backroom staff. Gibbs will work with other West Brom employees that remained after Tony Mowbray’s departure. These include James Morrison, who was first-team coach and ended last season in caretaker control, statistics analyst Damia Abella, who joined during Carlos Corberan’s tenure, and goalie coach Boaz Myhill, who, like Morrison, was promoted from the academy under Mowbray.

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