Valencia CF

Portugal international winger Nani has completed his transfer from Fenerbahce to Valencia, confirmed on Tuesday.

News of the move came via the Spanish club: 

#WelcomeNani pic.twitter.com/68rgQy9mH2

— Valencia CF (@valenciacf_en) July 5, 2016

The transfer sees the 29-year-old return to one of the elite leagues in European football and handed a chance to shine at one of the continent's biggest clubs. Here is a look at what Nani will bring to the Estadio Mestalla in 2016-17:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbw3-gqrc3I

Nani was a big-money buy for Manchester United in 2007, signing for £19 million from Sporting Club and joining with the promise of huge potential to be fulfilled. And while he enjoyed plenty of success in his seven years at Old Trafford, the Portugal man never quite lived up to the billing.

The winger won the UEFA Champions League with United in the 2007-08 term, along with four Premier League titles and one FA Cup. It wasn’t enough to stop former manager Louis van Gaal moving him out on loan back to Sporting for a season in 2014, though, before a permanent move to Turkey went ahead last summer.

He’s enjoyed a renaissance of sorts since and impressed at the 2016 UEFA European Championship for Portugal. World Soccer Talk’s Nipun Chopra hailed the wide man’s talent during the tournament:

https://twitter.com/NipunChopra7/status/745659071307587584

It’s quality he’ll be seeking to show much more frequently at Valencia. Last term was something of a disaster for Los Che, as they sacked two managers (Nuno Santo and Gary Neville), flirted with relegation and eventually found their way out of trouble under the guidance of Pako Ayestaran.

A player of Nani’s quality will help Valencia be much more competitive next season. The winger can operate on either flank or off the centre-forward, and he has the ingenuity to conjure brilliant moments in games. Bleacher Report's Andy Brassell thinks he should continue to play at the point of the attack at his new club:

Nani going to Valencia good for both parties. If they've learned one thing from this Euro, though - continue to use him as a striker.

— Andy Brassell (@andybrassell) July 5, 2016

His shooting on either foot, devilish crossing and ability to drive at opposition defenders makes him a wonderful player to watch when on form.

Ayestaran and the Valencia supporters will have to put up with some erratic play, not to mention a player that doesn’t typically indulge in the defensive or physical side of the game. But Nani is well suited to La Liga and is the kind of player that’ll give the Mestalla crowd some overdue excitement.

“Valencia have changed. That much is obvious,” wrote Vicente Bau of city newspaper Superdeporte (in Spanish) last Thursday, the day after Los Che’s 4-0 demolition of Eibar. “Pako Ayestaran might continue (as coach) or not next season, but there’s no doubt that his Valencia is quite distinct from the one he inherited from Gary Neville. From boredom to fun.”

That much had been clear in the stands at the Mestalla on Wednesday evening. Those famously demanding fans, who have spent most of the campaign venting their frustration both through their chants and their waved white handkerchiefs, raised the roof with their cheers, even with the old stadium only two-thirds full. They even broke out a celebratory Mexican wave after Joao Cancelo’s beautifully constructed goal had finished the scoring in the second half.

That Wednesday night was a story of two Pakos—or, more accurately, Pako and Paco. The latter, homegrown striker Paco Alcacer, was brought into the side in the sole change from the XI that beat mighty Barcelona at Camp Nou on the previous Sunday, replacing midfielder Enzo Perez with Andre Gomes and winning goalscorer Santi Mina shuffling across accordingly. The popular Alcacer smashed a hat-trick as Valencia swept their visitors aside with surprising fluency.   

Switching the team around after undoubtedly the team’s outstanding result of a difficult season underlined just how comfortable Ayestaran seems at the helm. He has history with the club, of course, having been Rafael Benitez’s assistant when Valencia won two La Liga titles in three years, in 2002 and 2004.

When Neville appointed Ayestaran in February to reprise the role—and the former Manchester United player has always insisted that this was the case, rather than having the coach thrust upon him, as per BBC Sport—he undoubtedly had drawing on this experience in mind. Now, with hindsight, he may will consider that Ayestaran was always being lined up as a safe pair of hands to pick up the slack when Neville’s position became untenable.

Not that the locals, who are enjoying their football for pretty much the first time in this campaign, will care one jot. Their appreciation of Ayestaran is based on more than simple nostalgia for the good old days when Valencia were a genuine force, the Atletico Madrid of their day, if you like.

The new man has not rested on his laurels for a second. Although he told Sky Sports’ Guillem Balague in this recent interview that Neville’s struggles to communicate presented a difficulty, the fact is that Ayestaran’s actions have been far more important than any spoken instruction. Much of his work so far has been firefighting, plain and simple.

That the club were forced into firing Neville before the summer (which they really rather would have avoided) made clear what the remit was. A shambolic defeat at Las Palmas (a match in which Valencia had been gifted a second-minute lead) underlined the urgency that was required. Ayestaran quickly decided that his players weren’t fit enough, and ordered double sessions of training to get his men up to speed.

The work is clearly paying dividends already, as Bau wrote. This team has a zest and an identity, lifting the Mestalla crowd. Set in a fluid 4-3-3 to face Eibar, the combination of the left-footed Rodrigo (a major disappointment since his arrival from Benfica) and the excellent young right-back Cancelo on the right flank gave them real incision.

Ayestaran’s value from an ideological perspective matters to those fans, too; not just as a symbol of a former era of glory, but as a definitive break from the last two coaches. Simply, he is not from the Peter Lim/Jorge Mendes sphere of influence, like Neville or Nuno, under whom they began the season. There is no suggestion of cronyism. Time will tell if this is just an emergency measure or a template with which to move forward.

Strategy was particularly on the mind as Eibar came to town. The tiny Basque club have had to be tight in this area, after being famously forced to hastily pull together a share issue to reach the minimum amount of working capital required by La Liga's financial laws on promotion.

Nevertheless, Eibar arrived at Mestalla a point ahead of Valencia with five games to go, despite having a seasonal budget of some €80 million less than them, as the print edition of Superdeporte pointed out on matchday. 

Neville’s first La Liga game on the bench, incidentally, had been a 1-1 draw at Eibar’s Ipurua home in mid-December—he had been appointed a week before, but caretaker Voro and brother Phil oversaw the draw with Barcelona while Gary settled in, before he took his seat on the bench for a Champions League home defeat to Lyon.

It must immediately be said in Neville’s defence that he took on a very bad situation. Valencia’s final league match under Nuno, at Sevilla, was a sorry sight. It was a 1-0 thrashing in which it was clear that the players had given up on the coach that guided them back into the top four just last season. The dressing room turning their back on him again underlines that Neville’s problems were not purely of the linguistic variety.

So it seems a bit presumptuous to talk of turning points—after all, they won four in a row under Neville in February, including a double demolition of Rapid Vienna in the Europa League. Yet there’s already a major difference.

Neville’s Valencia never truly broke out of their string of poor performances. Even the match in which he broke his duck in La Liga, against the even more lowly Espanyol, was far from convincing, with goalkeeper Diego Alves saving their bacon more than once. They never got away from their continual repetition of the same mistakes, as evident in the two home losses against Athletic Bilbao and Celta Vigo that sealed Neville’s fate Athletic—70 minutes of solidity followed by swift, and total collapse.

Three successive La Liga wins (including the famous victory at Barca, of course) didn’t totally wipe out the shudders that accompany those memories. Quite rightly, too, with Alcacer’s next goal after his hat-trick being a late leveller to snatch a point at struggling Getafe on Sunday. Even the youngest members of the squad are wary.

“We started the season badly, but now we have to fix things,” Cancelo told the gathered media after the Eibar game. The Portuguese player wasn’t getting carried away about the prospect of sneaking a European place. “We have to try to put things right, and game-by-game we will do that and see where we finish.”

Ayestaran’s attitude, undoubtedly, will be the same, even though sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch has admitted that he is a genuine candidate for the full-time role (as reported by EFE, via El Mundo Deportivo, in Spanish). As will that of the fans. Working out where Valencia will go next is a subject for the summer. For now, all involved being able to enjoy their football at last is a good starting point.

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.   

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. 

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). 

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. 

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. 

Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville has been sacked by Valencia after a disappointing recent run of results.  

News of the 41-year-old’s departure from the club came in a statement on Wednesday after four months on the touchline. Pako Ayestaran was named head coach for the remainder of the season.

"I would like to thank Valencia Football Club, the fans, staff and the players," Neville said in a statement via Guillem Balague of Sky Sports. "I would have liked to have continued the work I started but understand that we are in a results business and in the 28 games (W10 D7 L11) they have not been to my standards or to those which are required by this club."

Neville took on the job at the Mestalla earlier in the campaign after Nuno Santo was relieved of his duties by the Spanish giants. It was the former United star’s first foray into management, and after some glittering displays as a pundit on Sky Sports, many expected big things from the England coach.

However, after he was appointed, things did not go well for Neville. His Valencia side failed to win in his first 12 league games at the helm, but the worst moment of his tenure came at the Camp Nou, as Los Che were hammered 7-0 by a rampant Barcelona outfit in the Copa del Rey semi-final first leg.

Afterwards, Neville claimed the heavy loss was “one of the worst experiences I've ever gone through in football,” per BBC Sport. Former England striker and Match of the Day host Gary Lineker reflected on how different punditry is to managing a football team:

Just saw that Barca beat Valencia 7-0. It's so much easier on the telly.

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) February 3, 2016

The final straw for the Valencia owners was the 2-0 loss to Celta Vigo on March 20, though, with Neville relieved of his duties before his contract was set to expire at the end of the campaign.

Although his time at the Mestalla does not reflect well, there will certainly be roles for Neville in football further down the line. Whether that’s back on the television as a pundit or in a different position at a football club, this stint with Valencia does not take away from the fact he’s clearly a bright thinker and a man with some refreshing ideas about the game of football.

The Valencia job was always going to be a huge gamble and an almighty challenge for Neville, but it was a massive opportunity he couldn’t turn down. Now, with some critical experience under his belt, it’s going to be fascinating to see what this great of the English game turns his hand to next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTSPIwwWfaQ

Gary Neville's somewhat unpopular status in Valencia was dramatically emphasised on Friday when revellers burnt an effigy of the former Manchester United captain at the stake.

The hot treatment came as part of the city's celebrations for Las Fallas—also known as the festival of fire.

Gary Neville burnt at the stake in Valencia: https://t.co/7wc4gW1H1S #Valencia #LasFallas pic.twitter.com/D5IBUrpZfU

— AS USA (@English_AS) March 25, 2016

Neville was joined in the flames by a number of other cartoonish creations, including Valencia owner Peter Lim and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It's been a difficult season for Valencia, with the club exiting the UEFA Champions League at the group stage and currently sitting 14th in La Liga, six points off the relegation zone. Neville took over in December but has won just three times in 16 league games.

[YouTube, Twitter, h/t as]

Gary Neville has had a tough start to club management at Valencia.

In the video above, Bleacher Report Insider Dean Jones tells Marcus Speller that the Englishman is unlikely to accept the job beyond the end of the season.

Gary Neville got off to a rocky start as Valencia boss, but his team's form has finally picked up.

In the video above, Bleacher Report Insider Dean Jones tells Marcus Speller that officials at the club are planning for next season—and they're including the former Manchester United man in their plans.

This absolutely shocking dive by Valencia's David Pascual in their #UYL match vs Celtic managed to con the referee. pic.twitter.com/JMyftGRQyR

— World Soccer Talk (@worldsoccertalk) February 10, 2016

It's still early in 2016, but Valencia youth player David Pascual may have already wrapped up the year's "Fallon d'Floor" award for the most outrageous dive. 

Not only was it awful, but it also worked. 

The Valencia man was tracking back in the fifth minute of stoppage time in a 1-1 match against Celtic when he hurled himself to the ground as Jack Aitchison raced through. 

Valencia'lı David Pascual, vuruldu(!) ve faulü aldı. pic.twitter.com/7f3vJcynCT

— Online Spor (@onlinespor) February 10, 2016

The referee bought it and awarded the foul, and Celtic went on to lose on penalties to get knocked out of the UEFA Youth League.

[WorldSoccerTalk, h/t Talking Baws]

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.  

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.

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).

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.

Real Madrid winger Denis Cheryshev has joined Valencia on loan until the end of the season.

Los Che confirmed the signing on Monday, with the club revealing that Cheryshev will undergo a medical on Tuesday and be presented to the media. 

The Russia international has been at Real since 2002 and broke into the senior setup in 2012, but he has never been able to nail down a first-team spot at the Bernabeu.

This season he has played only 33 minutes in La Liga, per WhoScored.com. He made headlines back in December after being fielded in a Copa del Rey clash against Cadiz, despite being ineligible, in a move that eventually got Real expelled from the competition, per ESPN FC's Dermot Corrigan.

However, Cheryshev looks set to be able to play in the Copa for Valencia, perhaps even on Wednesday when they face Barcelona in the first leg of their semi-final tie, per Sport. 

Cheryshev is a talented player and proved when on loan at Villarreal last season that he can excel in La Liga—he netted four times and provided nine assists with the Yellow Submarine, per WhoScored.

Spanish football writer Richard Martin believes the 25-year-old could be an asset in Gary Neville's side:

Beyond laughs about Cadiz-Copa-gate, think Cheryshev to Valencia a good move for everyone. He was very effective at Villarreal.

— Richard Martin (@RichMartinMcr) February 1, 2016

While the former Manchester United man has overseen a decent run in the Copa since he took over at the Mestalla in December, he has still yet to record a league win.

Valencia are 12th in La Liga, and Neville will undoubtedly be hoping that Cheryshev can play a role in a quick turnaround in fortunes.