Gary Neville Quickly Discovering the Enormity of His Task at Struggling Valencia
Gary Neville was being as forthright as ever.
"I'm sure the Rayo Vallecano coach will be disappointed with the result," the Valencia manager said candidly after his side's 2-2 draw with Rayo at Mestalla on Sunday. Neville was sort of right, but not quite. The man he was referring to, Paco Jemez, was far more than disappointed. He was furious. Livid, actually.
"If we'd lost to Valencia, I'd have hanged myself in the dressing room," said the always-colourful Jemez after his team's strong performance. The thing is, his team almost had lost. Up 2-1, Rayo had seen a Paco Alcacer equaliser wrongly disallowed for offside. Two minutes later, Alcacer equalised anyway. It could easily have been 3-2, but Valencia hadn't deserved that and Rayo had deserved more.
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After five minutes, the visitors were dominant and should have been ahead; after 15, they were. After 45, they'd forced Mestalla to turn on its own team. After 55, they should have been out of sight. And Valencia's goals thereafter came from freak moments, nothing more.
"There are days when after the game you feel sad because you haven't played well at all," said Jemez. "But other times you feel cheated by football." Clearly, this was one of those times. "We were the only side on the pitch," he added.
That was true for the first half in particular. While Rayo were impressive, Valencia were downright awful, barely able to string three passes together or get out of their own half. They were muddled, said some; lost, said others. "Unacceptable," said Neville.
Worse still was this wasn't anything new.
It's now approaching three months since Valencia last won a league game, a most bizarre 5-1 victory over Celta Vigo in early November in which the losers were probably the better side. Valencia have since taken six points from a possible 27, their record in that time reading draw, loss, draw, draw, draw, loss, draw, loss and draw.
It hasn't all been bad, no, but it hasn't been anything approaching good, either. Mixed in with some hard-earned points against Barcelona and Real Madrid have been damaging draws with sides Valencia should comfortably have the measure of. Against Eibar, Los Che needed a late goal to salvage a point. Ditto against Getafe. Ditto against Rayo. Against Real Sociedad, they couldn't salvage anything.
Until the latter, Neville had insisted performances had been positive even if results hadn't. "Today I can't say that," he said then.
Neville, of course, hasn't been in charge for the entirety of this barren run in which the only victories have come in the Copa del Rey. Since being appointed in early December, he's watched one league game from the stands and six from the sideline. As he's done so, he's seen little to get excited about. He's watched his team fail to keep a single clean sheet. He's watched them slide into the table's bottom half.
He's watched the enormity of his task become ever so clear.
When Neville arrived at the club, his appointment was met with equal parts skepticism and excitement. Here was a man who hadn't managed before, who didn't speak the language and whose initial agreement with the club was a short-term one, but still, there was something fresh and encouraging in his arrival too.
Confident, full of conviction, his words carrying weight, the Englishman brought with him the aura of a winner. Mostly because he is; as a Manchester United legend, he's more decorated than every single one of his players combined.
Neville also arrived with a reputation for being sharp, intelligent and impressively analytical. In England, his work with Sky Sports had made him a big deal, which suddenly gave international significance to Valencia as a result. In him, the club had hired a name and not just a coach, a leader who would theoretically give them direction and purpose.
But it hasn't been that simple, and that's at all not surprising; Valencia's issues go well beyond the first-team coach, Neville having been dropped into an environment of flux, tension and awkward questions. Questions such as: Where is this all going? Why is the club being run like his? What the hell is going on?
If Neville didn't know that then, he does now.
And the background picture is important here.
Last summer, Valencia fans held high expectations for a blockbuster transfer window. Not only was their team back in the Champions League, it was owned by Peter Lim, a Singaporean billionaire. Big names and big fees were expected, but it was only the latter the fans saw.
Instead of marquee names, the club spent over €100 million on players it already had, completing permanent transfers for players they'd taken on loan the previous season in Alvaro Negredo, Rodrigo, Andre Gomes and Joao Cancelo. There were new faces, yes: young ones, promising ones. But not the sort envisaged.
At board level, there were more concerns. In July, former president Amadeo Salvo departed, as did sporting director Francisco Rufete and scout Roberto Fabian Ayala. It was seen as a sort of civil war, Lim assuming full control, inserting adviser Lay Hoon Chan to replace Salvo and turning to the influence of good friend and agent Jorge Mendes.
Mendes had been key to Lim's takeover at Valencia and had also brought former manager Nuno, his first client, to the club as well. More concerning, though, was his impact on the squad, as explained here at Bleacher Report in October:
"To those outside the club, particularly the fans, Mendes looks like a quasi-sporting director with conflicted interests.
Gomes, Cancelo and Rodrigo were all brought to Mestalla [in 2014] with Mendes' help, with many feeling the fees for the trio were inflated. [In 2015], the Portuguese agent also helped the club sign Mina, Bakkali and Danilo, the latter arriving via another one-year loan with a compulsory €15 million purchase deal, €14 million of which Valencian sports daily Superdeporte (h/t Dermot Corrigan of ESPN FC) claims will go straight to Mendes.
But it doesn't end there.
Mendes hasn't only brought people in; he's taken them away, too. He is, after all, the man who took Otamendi to Manchester City, overseeing the loss of Valencia's outstanding player of last season and personally benefitting from doing so.
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The knock-on effect of all of that has been seen weekly at Mestalla. Inside the ground, fans have routinely voiced their displeasure over where the club is being taken, suspicious of team selections, matchday decisions and the thought Valencia might be being run simply for the personal interests of Lim, Mendes, friends and clients.
As such, the hostility toward the home team has been on par with anything seen at the fickle Bernabeu in the capital. As the good feelings have been eroded, confidence has too. Dramatically. Valencia are nothing like last season's version.
In their return to prominence in 2014-15, Los Che were bullish and aggressive, their approach one that could have been described as all guns blazing. Valencia's thing was to hit their opponents hard and hit them early, grabbing quick leads and riding the consequent waves of momentum created in a raucous Mestalla to the finish line.
They battered Atletico Madrid that way. They did similar to Real Madrid. Only Barcelona escaped.
Now, though, they barely get going at all. Or not until they've almost lost, anyway.
Consistently, Valencia have only been sparked into life once they've gone behind. It was that way against Barcelona and Madrid, but it was also the same against Eibar, Getafe and Rayo. To that, Neville has spoken of the encouragement he takes from his team's spirit and ability to rally, but at Valencia that's not enough. Not even close.
The statistics are damning too. In attack, they have 25 goals in 20 games, and according to WhoScored.com, only Villarreal and Espanyol have taken fewer shots and created fewer chances. In defence, only Sporting Gijon have conceded more.
Immediate fixes appear scarce.
For Neville, communication remains problematic, just as it was expected to be, the need for translation blunting the impact of his messages and negating perhaps his most obvious skill.
"Without a shadow of a doubt the biggest challenge has been half-time," said Neville to Sky Sports. "Having to communicate through a translator, it's the most frustrating thing. The team talk, because it is well prepared and planned is fine. But half-time obviously is just frustrating, you want to be able to speak and for people to react."
To address that, Neville is learning the language, but genuine progress will take time. Consequently, the sometimes overlooked aspects of management—building a rapport with players, developing a real connection and understanding—are considerably more complicated than they would be elsewhere despite the respect he's won for his professionalism and rigorous approach to his daily work.
"I knew what I was getting into but that is the biggest frustration and challenge so far," he added.
Change is proving difficult, then. His is a group of players short on confidence and engulfed in a volcanic environment. Still wearing the scars of Nuno's final months in charge that were defined by political division, his team lacks presence and identity, Valencia seemingly unsure of who they are and what they're about—as a team and as a club.
At club level, Neville's appointment at least represents a step away from Mendes, as does the recent appointment of Jesus Garcia Pitarch as sporting director. Improvement in the transfer market will be the next step, but until then, Neville will have to work with what he's got in a league that might just be surprising him for its difficulty.
At the top, he will have known Madrid and Barcelona are untouchable and that Atletico are serious movers in both Spain and Europe. But La Liga's strength now goes beyond that; the middle class is stronger than it has been for some time. Indeed, Villarreal are excellent; Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao are ferocious; Celta Vigo can play anyone off the park; Deportivo La Coruna and Eibar work furiously hard; Getafe and Rayo can be a handful.
In the table, Neville's Valencia sit below all bar Rayo.
"We have to correct this immediately," said Neville on Sunday, now fully aware of the enormity of his task.
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