Valencia and Gary Neville: More Questions Hang over Club Than They Do Coach

Gary Neville was up on his feet, pointing, shouting and instructing. Animated, demonstrative, this was typical Neville, but finally, at long last, he was getting a response. 

In front of him, his team were playing with intensity, purpose and adventure. Against heavyweight opposition, his was a youthful and new-look outfit showcasing an exuberance that felt significant. From 2-0 down, they'd rallied to draw level; the goals had been stunning, the comeback, too. And then they pinched it. 

For Neville, this was more like it. He hadn't seen anything like this for months, but now he was getting what he wanted. 

There was just one problem, though: this wasn't really his team. 

Instead, this was England, and this was Roy Hodgson's team, the opponents Germany. With a stunning 3-2 victory, a revamped England had given Neville—the team's assistant coach—temporary relief from the rage-inducing frustration he'd been consistently given from the team that was his.

And yet, that team wasn't really his either. Not anymore. 

Neville had travelled to join England during the March international break with the world still in the belief he was the embattled manager of Valencia. He wasn't. According to the Guardian's Sid Lowe, the club had already made the decision to part ways with the Englishman but delayed the announcement until the day he returned to the city. 

"After analysing carefully the sporting situation, the club decided to make this change in the best interests of Valencia Club de Futbol with a view to the end of the current season," read the official statement. 

It was telling. 

Neville had expected to keep his job until season's end—"I would have liked to have continued the work I started but understand that we are in a results business," he said in a message posted on the club's official website—but the sporting situation the club statement had alluded to had grown dire. Potentially disastrous. 

Prior to the international break, defeat to Celta Vigo had been Valencia's fourth loss in five in all competitions and third straight in the league. With 34 points, the club sat in 14th place, six points above the drop zone. Forget European ambitions; relegation had become a genuine threat, and it still is.

That's right: A relegation fight. Valencia. How has it come to this?

It's a question with few obvious answers—just like many of the others that hang over this club at present.   

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For the now-departed Neville, right from the start there was always a very real possibility that it would end this way. 

On the day he was unveiled back in December, Neville the coach was asked what Neville the pundit would have concluded of his appointment. "I would question it as a neutral observer," he responded candidly. "I'd be sceptical."

He went on to add that it was his job to dispel the scepticism, but its existence wasn't hard to understand. In him, Valencia had appointed a manager with no previous experience, who didn't speak the language, who possessed limited knowledge of La Liga or his new players and whose agreement was a short-term one that raised further questions about the next and not just the now. 

How was this going to work? How could it work?

These were the realities right from the beginning, but concurrently, there was also an element of intrigue, of excitement, to his appointment. 

Indeed, Neville's arrival in Spain brought something new, a different edge. Before him, Valencia had been gripped by political and institutional turmoil during Nuno Espirito Santo's final months in charge, but in Neville, the club was taking what felt like a significant change of course. 

Though he'd come from left-field, the Englishman brought much with him: acclaim, respect, a sense of authority and the aura of a serial winner. With his words, he was direct and honest; his messages were firm; his conviction was strong. 

Immediately, he spoke of trusting his new players, encouraging youth and promoting from within; of connecting with the fans, involving them and inspiring them; of embracing the culture, learning the language and embedding his family in the area. 

The noises were good, and the reception was warm. The intrigue, the cautious excitement—it was there. 

But so were the realities. 

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After watching from the stands as his new side drew admirably with Barcelona, Neville's first game in charge was a 2-0 defeat at home to Lyon in the UEFA Champions League.

"Neville's got his work cut out," said Marca's Fernando Alvarez.

Quickly, the enormity of Neville's task became clear. Between mid-December and mid-February, Valencia contested nine leagues games and won none. Aside from Real Madrid, the opponents were hardly fearsome either: Eibar, Getafe, Villarreal, Real Sociedad, Rayo Vallecano, Deportivo La Coruna, Sporting Gijon and Real Betis.

There was also was the 7-0 humiliation at the hands of Barcelona in the Copa del Rey, and when Valencia finally did win in the league, against Espanyol, they were extremely fortunate.

Ditto against Granada.

Ditto against Malaga. 

Consistently, Neville's side were outplayed and outthought. Time after time, they went behind. Time after time, their response was muddled.

Neville tinkered, experimented and searched—the goalkeepers rotated, the identity of the wingers and full-backs consistently changed, the midfield dynamic went one way and then the other, both one- and-two-striker systems were tested, and the captaincy was taken off Dani Parejo and given to Paco Alcacer—but what mattered didn't change: results, an absence of clarity and the lack of an on-field identity. 

When Rayo played Valencia off the park at Mestalla in January but somehow only left with a point, manager Paco Jemez said: "If we'd lost to Valencia, I'd have hanged myself in the dressing room." Then, in March, after a feeble 1-0 loss to Levante in the derby that Neville repeatedly described as "unacceptable," Alcacer was asked what went wrong. "We didn't play," he responded, according to Super Deporte (h/t Reuters' Richard Martin). 

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For Neville, the task became bigger and more challenging than perhaps he'd anticipated. Communication was a problem; transmitting an idea was difficult, inspiration even more so. "Having to communicate through a translator, it's the most frustrating thing," he told Sky Sports' Geoff Shreeves (h/t Gerard Brand). "You want to be able to speak and for people to react."

It didn't help that he'd inherited a young squad that wasn't really his. Or that his squad had been scarred by the division prior to his arrival. Or that so many of his players were enduring below-par seasons at the same time. 

Still, though, questions are strong in number: Why couldn't Neville turn it around? Why was there no new-manager-driven emotional shift? Why was it so difficult to decipher what the plan was? Why was there no identity? Why did the club's on-field situation get worse under him? 

Did he confidently believe that all the obstacles—experience, language, local knowledge—could be overcome in a foreign land? Did he really know what he was getting himself into?

These are important questions, no doubt, ones that will linger over Neville as he ponders his next move. And yet, in terms of Valencia, such questions are secondary; the more significant ones hang over the club rather than they do coach. 

Why was Neville appointed? Why then? Were other alternatives dismissed? Is there any encompassing idea or plan here? What's the vision? Why is this club being run as it is? 

What is the point of Valencia right now?

These are the questions the club must answer through actions, as the background picture here is messy. 

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Last summer, Valencia, backed by the wealth of Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim, were expected to spend big in the transfer market. And the club did, just not in the way fans had anticipated. Or wanted. 

In total, the club spent more than €100 million, but the bulk of it accounted for Alvaro Negredo, Rodrigo, Andre Gomes and Joao Cancelo—players Valencia had already had on loan the previous season and for whom the club had compulsory purchase options. In terms of new faces, Zakaria Bakkali, Aymen Abdennour, Santi Mina, Mathew Ryan, Aderlan Santos and Danilo arrived. 

Valencia fans had wanted top quality, but what they got was quantity. And it was quantity driven by a key figure: agent Jorge Mendes. 

Having been instrumental in Lim's takeover of Valencia, Mendes suddenly looked like a quasi-sporting director with conflicted interests. In the summer of 2014, Gomes, Cancelo and Rodrigo had arrived at Valencia with his help (so had manager Nuno), the fees perceived by many as inflated; in 2015, so did Mina, Bakkali and Danilo. 

Mendes was also the man who took Nicolas Otamendi away from Valencia and to Manchester City. 

This was set against a backdrop of changes upstairs, too. In came Lim's advisor Lay Hoon Chan, and out went former president Amadeo Salvo, sporting director Francisco Rufete and scout Roberto Fabian Ayala. 

Lim was understandably shaping the club to his designs, but the suspicion was that Valencia was suddenly being run for the personal interests of Lim, Mendes, clients and friends—a suspicion that intensified when youngster Rafa Mir, another Mendes client, was from nowhere selected to start a crunch Champions League clash against Zenit Saint Petersburg in November. 

What was Mendes, then? "Jorge Mendes is just a friend," insisted Chan. 

Since, the appointment of Jesus Garcia Pitarch as sporting director has been a positive step away from the influence of the player agent. In a sense, the hiring of Neville was as well. Simultaneously, though, the hiring of the Englishman was Lim turning away from one friend and business partner and toward another, Neville involved with the Valencia president in the Salford City project, along with the Class of '92. 

Thus, what Valencia had given itself was an administrative structure with little experience, a squad with limited experience and a manager with no experience, all on the back of turmoil, suspicion, mistrust and tension. Neville has now gone, of course, but what's next? Where do Valencia go from here? Where do they want to go from here? Do they even know?

Again, what's the point of Valencia right now?

"We are going through a difficult time at the club," said Chan after of Neville's sacking. "We will not take our setback lightly. We see the issue here this season, and we'll plan forward very carefully. We will see a lot of changes."

There'll need to be, because while Neville departs with questions lingering over him, there are others who have plenty more to answer for.