Now, get it right!" demanded Super Deporte over a picture of Pitarch this week. His own position depends on it; few have been convinced by him and the idea is to choose a "proven" manager this time, even if that does not necessarily guarantee anything. Valencia depend on it too, but here's the thing: they depend on so much more besides. The thing is that in choosing the manager, and in the way they do so, they can gain a lot. Not so much a manager as a new start and a sense of direction, above all.
Neville arrived to sort out the mess left by Nuno -- that "mess" was a position just four points off a Champions League place -- but things got worse. Relegation started to look like a genuine possibility. Ayesteran joined him to help out, but it didn't help. So Ayesteran took over to sort out the mess left by Neville (and, erm, by himself) but his points record was worse than the Englishman. So perhaps Neville was not so bad, after all. Perhaps none of them were. For all their faults, perhaps it wasn't all their fault. That is the inescapable conclusion. An accurate one, too.
When Neville arrived, he could sense people already thinking "you won't be here for long." He found a culture that he felt was not conducive to sustained success; for all that the usual talk is of the fans being "too demanding," he embraced that idea even while recognising that it could sometimes bring problems. Did it help, say, 19-year-old Santi Mina's development to be confronted by angry fans on the night of a 7-0 defeat? Instead, Neville saw the opposite. Valencia was too comfortable, perhaps not sufficiently professionalised, not structured for the pursuit of peak performance and continuity. Fragmented, too. Nuno had talked of "social" problems.
After one impressive Europa League game last year, Neville said he needed the same from his players at the weekend. He knew he wouldn't get it. They were talented, but they under-performed. There was something in the culture that did not help. This is a club where the owner is absent, the president is not always there and the sporting director was trying to make himself heard. A club at which the suspicions surrounding the role of agent Jorge Mendes condition things. It doesn't even matter if it's not true and not fair -- it's there.