Gary Neville's Coaching Ambitions Won't Be Killed by Valencia Failure

There will be nothing decided this week. Certainly not the identity of the first finalist of this season’s Copa del Rey. After Valencia’s 7-0 humbling at the Camp Nou last week, it will take appreciably more than an orthodox miracle to deny Barcelona their place against (again, almost certainly) Sevilla in May’s final.

Gary Neville will be there in the dugout at the Mestalla, though quite how many fans will be there to vent their anger towards him, as Los Che face a lost cause, is open to question. Wednesday is likely to be painful for them (Neville, to his immense credit, has continually recognised the fans’ concerns and their investment in the situation) as well as the embattled coach.

It’s just another step of agony waiting for the real battle, which will come next Saturday evening at the same venue, against struggling Espanyol. It’s surely a last chance for Neville, even after the amount of must-wins that have come and gone for the Manchester United legend in recent weeks.

Marca’s print edition on Sunday introduced the day’s game at Real Betis as possibly his last, and even though Neville is expected to carry on for the moment, despite returning from the Benito Villamarin with another demoralising defeat, there cannot be many more reprieves.

Sunday’s loss saw a very ordinary Betis side leapfrog Valencia, and leave them four points clear of the bottom three. Another reverse to Espanyol would see the Catalans do likewise, and push the 2004 champions closer to the trapdoor.

Clearly, it has been majority shareholder Peter Lim’s will to give his business associate as much time as possible to find his range and turn things around, as Tom Hopkinson of the Sunday People reported. Yet the stakes have become unbearably high.

Local sports newspaper Superdeporte claimed on Monday—among photos and videos of an admirably open Neville doing his best to appease irate fans waiting at Valencia airport on the team’s return—that the club have begun to compile a potential shortlist of immediate replacements, apparently including former Sevilla coaches Juande Ramos and Joaquin Caparros.

There is anger among those supporters at Neville himself, heard in the chants of “¡Gary, vete ya!”, and many believe he shouldn’t have accepted the post in the first place. Bleacher Report’s own Guillem Balague, talking pre-match on Sky Sports’ coverage of Sunday’s match, strongly relayed the feeling that there had been “a lack of respect for the process” of the stages of progression it takes to become a top coach—and to become Valencia coach.

Neville’s greenness next to the task of leading such a behemoth of a club has been clear over the nine winless La Liga games he has overseen. Relying on Alvaro Negredo, outcast by the previous management and short of match fitness; and then watching as a defence that was reliable even in predecessor Nuno Espirito Santo’s worst moments fell to bits.

On Sunday at Betis, he failed to react quickly as inexperienced Wilfried Zahibo sailed perilously close to receiving a red card that could have left his side a man down, and a developing player licking his wounds from a painful dismissal, before finally substituting him.  

Dmitry Lovetsky/Associated Press

Yet Neville himself has been far from the guiltiest of parties in this sorry mess that Valencia find themselves in.

Though the stats tell us that Los Che were just five points shy of Celta Vigo in the fourth and final Champions League spot when the new coach took over at the beginning of December (compared to a 20-point gap now), that says nothing for the dynamic of the team, and the club, at that time.

The relationship between Nuno and his team was irrevocably fractured. The Portuguese coach’s last match in charge was the meekest of defeats at Sevilla (a team occupying a similar range of ambition, but with ostensibly fewer resources), and was the limpest of surrenders, a 1-0 thrashing in which Valencia didn’t even manage a shot at goal.

It crystallised the bulk of the problems that dogged Nuno in his second season, with a zesty and enterprising team having been turned into a disjointed and toothless one. They were also already on the brink of Champions League elimination.

Not that Nuno should carry the can alone. Far from it, in fact. Last summer’s €138 million summer spend looks impressive, right up to the point when you realise that some two-thirds of that figure represented compulsory purpose options on players who were already at Mestalla.

An eye-watering €57 million had already been committed on Negredo and Rodrigo, a pair of forwards who have scored a mere 11 La Liga goals between them in more than a season and a half.

Joel Ryan/Associated Press

Nuno’s Valencia team looked stale because that’s exactly what they were. They were no more likely to have reached the top four had the coach been given the continued backing of the board.

Any sensible transfer strategy was doomed—as was, arguably, Valencia’s season as a whole—when president Amadeo Salvo and sporting director Francisco Rufete (a veteran of Rafa Benitez’s 2004 Liga/UEFA Cup-winning side) were ousted in a power struggle which pitted them against super agent Jorge Mendes and his long-time confidant Nuno, as reported by El Confidencial (in Spanish).

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The arrival of further Mendes clients such as Danilo Barbosa and Aderlan Santos created further suspicion among the fans. What was Valencia coming to represent, and what were the aims of its custodians?

President Layhoon Chan’s declaration that Nuno’s replacement wouldn’t be from the Mendes stable (as reported by Football Espana), only for somebody with an already close relationship with Lim to be dropped in instead, must have seemed like some sort of sick joke.

So much of the opprobrium that Neville has attracted is down to what he represents (which goes all the way back to Nuno’s appointment, of course), rather than what he is, though results have changed that.

What is clear is that in this sort of atmosphere, even a more experienced coach than Neville would have had his work cut out.

That his pride, as well as his connections with Lim, pulled him towards the job is forgivable. He should not—and in a sane world will not—be made to pay for it forever.

There is little reason to suggest that Neville could not work out in a more nurturing environment. He could always use Ronald Koeman as his template. The Dutchman had his own disastrous reign of less than a season at Mestalla, leaving the club on the cusp of the relegation zone when he was fired in April 2008. He has recovered his reputation since.

The tale still has a little way to run. Espanyol will be no cakewalk, despite Constantin Galca’s side being in dire nick themselves. Neville will also be short of two left-backs (the suspended Jose Gaya and injured Guilherme Siqueira) and his best midfielder, Gomes.

Few would begrudge him the chance to restore some pride before he goes, whether that is in the near future or at the end of the campaign. His continuing decency in the face of intense pressure suggests there is a character beneath the current chaos at Mestalla.

Hopefully both Neville and those long-suffering fans will be able to look back on this in years to come as if it was just a bad dream.