"When the fans here are not happy with you, they have a way of letting you know," Gary Neville had said and on the night that turned out to be his last as coach of Valencia they did just that. It was 11 days ago now, his side were losing to Celta de Vigo, on course for a third league defeat in a row to go with the Europa League elimination suffered three days earlier, and a chant went round Mestalla. "Gary, vete ya!" it ran. Gary, go now!
They did not yet realise it but he was about to. Valencia announced that they had sacked Neville early on Wednesday evening; they had actually done so soon after that defeat. The Valencia coach had delayed joining the England squad because, he said, it was "the right thing to do", but by the time he got there he knew he was the former Valencia coach. No one else did; Roy Hodgson was informed later.
Neville did not tell the England players and he did not tell the Valencia players either. Silence allowed for the international break to pass peacefully and for his club players to return before the news was broken to them. Valencia’s squad found out on Wednesday when he returned to the city that he said he had “come to love”. He has left the club, but he will stay in Valencia for the next few days. In six weeks the Euros begin. There is much to do but he had hoped to be busier until then.
Neville joined Valencia on a five-month contract and, while a formal meeting had been pencilled in for April, over the last fortnight everyone knew that it would not be extended. Yet Neville had repeatedly insisted he would not resign and did not expect to be sacked. He had hoped to end the season in a dignified manner, to recover some of the credibility he claimed had led him to take on this challenge in the first place.
Others had doubted that there was a dignified way out. Worse, they feared that the way out was downwards. When Neville took over Valencia, they were in “crisis”, sitting in ninth place, five points off the final Champions League spot. As it turned out, that was not a crisis; this was a crisis. Out of the Champions League, out of the Europa League, out of the Copa del Rey, Valencia are now 14th in La Liga, only six points clear of the bottom three.
Under Neville, Valencia won just three of 16 league games; they did not manage a single clean sheet. With Sevilla, Barcelona, Villarreal and Real Madrid still to play in their final eight games, the risk of relegation was real. That they had come to fear the final weeks was revealed in Valencia's statement. "After analysing carefully the sporting situation, the club decided to make this change in the best interests of Valencia Club de Fútbol with a view to the end of the current season," it read.
The sporting director, Suso García Pitarch, who arrived after Neville, had suggested alternatives after the 7-0 hammering against Barcelona in the cup. He pushed for a change only to encounter resistance but the fear for their future, and the reaction of the fans at the end of the Celta game, had ended that. It also ended his spell in Spain. “I understand that we are in a results business and they have not been to my standards or to those which are required by this club,” Neville’s statement said.
Nobody said this would be easy but nobody thought it would be this hard. “I believe in myself and I believe that I can deliver or I would not have taken this on,” Neville said on the day he was presented. He did not come into this blind – his brother Phil was already at the club as assistant coach and will remain there too – but it turned out that he had taken on even more than he realised: a young, divided, disconnected and unfit squad, an unstable club in a foreign country, where he does not speak the language and midway through the season, too.
“Are you ready for this?” he was asked. “Well, we’ll find out,” he said.
Nothing went right and nothing seemed to remedy it. Neville might not have been the problem but nor was he the cure. He sought solutions, over and over, but did not find them. Perhaps the search was part of the problem. He used three different goalkeepers and tried endless combinations. He brought in a new assistant coach, who has now replaced him as first team coach, and changed his captain. He defended his players, until the day of the derby when he said he could defend them no more. And it just did not happen.
There was bad luck, sure, but mostly there were bad performances. “Unacceptable” was a word he ended up using too often. It took 10 games for Valencia to win in the league under him; they lost a La Liga game at Mestalla for the first time in over a year; and against Barcelona in the cup they suffered what the sporting director described as one of the worst nights in the club’s history. Neville announced that they “absolutely must” win at Betis – and they lost.
He kept going, refusing to resign. They did finally win in the league, somehow defeating Espanyol, but he said it was not cause for celebration. There, at least, he was proved right. Three wins in four seemed to change everything, but not for long. It was still slipping from him; remedying this was not possible and with each passing game the supporters’ patience wore thinner.
When Valencia beat Athletic in the Europa League only to get knocked out on away goals anyway, suddenly playing with energy, commitment and talent, Neville said that it was simple: he had to get the same performance from them again three days later. But, deep down, he knew he would not; he knew he could not. And the fans knew too. Three days later Valencia were beaten 2-0 by Celta and Mestalla told Neville to go.
(Guardian service)
