Valencia - Real Madrid match thread

 And so arrives one of the most hyped games of the season. Usually this game would attract attention anyway, but last season's controversy involving Vini Jr overshadows this one.

Prior to the game Netflix announced they were making a documentary about Vini's return to Mestalla. After thinking it over, Valencia decided to deny them access to Mestalla, as well as an interview with Hugo Duro. Totally the right decision. A balanced documentary on Spain's problem of casual and not-so-casual racism would be interesting. That would naturally feature last season's game at Mestalla, but also provide context on why Vini almost uniquely gets targeted by the idiots (his constant obnoxious behaviour and goading of players and opposition fans) and also look at other clubs' incidences of this, including the many involving Real Madrid fans themselves. However, Netflix's documentary was never going to be that. It would have been a hatchet job on us for cheap views. Hopefully our fans ignore these provocations and focus on the game.

For the first time this season, Baraja has a full squad available with Andre Almeida finally back after his long-term injury and Thierry and Diego Lopez after shorter ones. Madrid have been strong this season with only 2 defeats in all competitions, both away to city rivals Atletico. Despite that, we do have form in springing surprises against them, so fingers crossed for tonight.

Las Palmas - Valencia

 Another placeholder for comments, since I'm still travelling and this game will be the middle of the night for me.

After a 6-season absence Las Palmas unfortunately returned to the top flight. I say unfortunately because, in their previous 3-season stint, they were nothing except a pain in the behind for us. In the first game of the 2016-17 season, Valencia suffered a devastating 2-4 defeat at Mestalla, an omen for the awful season still to come. The season after that, though we had a terrific first season with Marcelino, a defeat in Las Palmas, where we had 2 players sent off, kicked off a slump in form which saw us lose 6 games in a row in league and Copa. 

Before the season, we were expected to be rivals, though not as it's turned out. Many pre-season predictions had one or both of us relegated. Instead, like us, Las Palmas have had a relatively strong season, playing attractive football which has had them on the edge of the European places, though they've been off-form recently and come into the game with a 2-2-3 record, while Valencia has won 5 of the last 6.

Both Almeida and Diakhaby should be back soon for Valencia and Thierry's injury is not as bad as originally feared so he should be back to the team some time in March. 

Valencia - Almeria match thread

 This is mostly a placeholder to allow for comments, sorry to say, as I'm travelling this weekend to watch football in Germany and that game clashes with ours. 

The winter transfer window closes today and Valencia has another operation in play. The Rafa Mir move has been reactivated. Valencia made an offer yesterday to loan him for the rest of the season, paying 30% of his wages and having a buy option of 4m. Sevilla instantly rejected that but negotiations are ongoing. As I've said, I think Mir would be a good addition. Not because he'd score lots of goals, but because he'd keep Baraja happy and would fit Baraja's system well as a physically strong forward who could bully opposing defenders and help us to "defend from the front." While it's still in balance I'd say the deal is more likely than not as Sevilla want rid of Mir and Mir only has eyes for us. Meriton's penny pinching remains the stumbling block.

After 4 wins in a row, Valencia came crashing down, somewhat predictably, against our long time nemesis Simeone's Atletico. The team has a chance to make amends against the bottom club Almeria. The latter are chasing an unwelcome record. If they don't beat us they'll equal Sporting Gijon's record from 1997/98 of the most games at the start of the season without a win. Almeria, of course, actually played well at Real Madrid and dodgy refereeing decisions cost them at least a point. They also drew with us earlier in the season so this game is not one we should take for granted.

With Paulista now gone and Diakhaby still at Afcon it will be interesting to see what defence Baraja opts for. Mosquera is almost a given but his partner isn't. Yarek and Cenk are the main options, assuming Baraja doesn't want to push Guillamon back. 

EDIT/UPDATE
The Mir deal didn't happen. As in the summer, Valencia claimed that after agreeing a deal, Sevilla changed the conditions at the last minute. Sevilla claimed that they hadn't changed anything and the difference in asking prices was only 100,000 euros. With Meriton, both options are possible, including that Lim had no intention of re-signing Mir and just went through the motions. It's embarrassing and a poor look all round.

Worse, there was also the following rumour:

"Valencia’s owner Peter Lim was considering sacking their coach Ruben Baraja because he continued to play Gabriel Paulista despite the club's disapproval."

Given that they sacked Marcelino in part for taking the Copa seriously, nothing would surprise me. Sacking Baraja for non-sporting reasons would probably be the final straw for me. If something like that happened, I'd probably take a break from Valencia until Lim sold. There are rumours that Lim is in poor health and his son has no interest in inheriting Valencia, so while I actually wish Lim the best of health, I hope he does sell soon.

Winter transfer window: Paulista and Koba out, Federico in

 I did mention in a previous post that Paulista's contract situation was presenting the club with a problem. If he'd played 4 more games then he autorenewed as one of the highest wage earners (5m a year.) It seems that has been resolved and he's now leaving on a free transfer to Atletico Madrid. That saves the club over 2m on wages for the rest of the season. He made 220 appearances for the club, scoring 8 goals.

Flying to Madrid one way.

I'm in two minds about this. Taken in isolation, it has a lot of sense about it. He's injury prone and inconsistent and his disciplinary record is not great (sent off 4 times.) On the other hand, it came out of the blue a bit and is typical of the club's haphazard approach to things. Knowing his contract situation the club should have done 1 of 3 things last summer

1- Sell him and get some cash.
2- Negotiate in good time with him and his agent on a 1-year renewal at a lower wage.
3- Wait until early November to see how he does and then make a decision in good time about if he should leave in January. In that case, inform Baraja and start identifying replacements. 

As ever, the club seems to make random, rash decisions with the only motivating factor seeming to be short-term cost cutting with little or no planning. 

The club has also confirmed the departure of Koba Koindredi. He'd made 19 appearances for the first team, 7 as starter, all of them in Copa (except a league game against Celta in December 2021) and scored 2 goals, both in Copa. He's another promising young player who didn't quite happen and again, we almost have to hope this one doesn't come back to bite us as the club hasn't included any buy back fee or anything, just letting him go to Estoril for the disappointing sum of 2.5m.

At least, unlike, last year, the club has made an addition. Peter Federico is joining from Real Madrid. He joins on loan with a buy option of 2m for 50% of his rights. He's a promising youth, so we have to hope he steps up. He is at least a right winger, exactly a position needed and can also cover left wing and has even played wing back too. 

Overall, not a transfer window to get excited about, but when is that ever the case at Valencia?

Atletico Madrid - Valencia match thread

 A tough one today after a good run. To illustrate what a tricky away game this is, when Valencia last won at Atletico Madrid, it was our first season without David Villa, Diego Simeone wasn't even manager and only 3 of the 14 who played for Valencia that day are still active (Tino Costa in the French second league, Guaita at Celta and Alba in Miami.) February 2011 is a long time ago and in the time in between we've found it one of our most barren grounds, losing 7 of the last 8 with only a Parejo free kick breaking that sequence. The team came frustratingly close 2 seasons ago, taking a 2-goal lead only for Atletico to score 2 in injury time to win 3-2.

In our favour, we've had more rest as Atletico played Sevilla in Copa on Thursday, winning 1-0. The scoreline is deceptive since it was easier for them, with Greizmann skying a penalty after slipping and 2 goals narrowly ruled out for offside. Valencia also scored a surprise 3-0 win over Atletico in Mestalla earlier this season with Duro scoring twice, same as he did 2 seasons ago. In team news, bad news for us, as Thierry has a long term injury and it's unlikely he'll play again this season. 

On the winter transfer front, it's very much a case of "move along, nothing to see." Valencia was linked with deals for Rafa Mir and Peter Federico of Real Madrid, but nothing has come of those. The hold up seems mostly because the Koba deal hasn't happened, but also because Meriton are too dumb to see with a couple of additional bodies on loan with buy options we could qualify for Europe and that would repay the loan fees with a nice profit.

Half-Time.
That was painful to watch. Atleti totally dominated us and apart from a half chance at a corner we did nothing in an attacking sense while they missed at least 3 good chances. One of the biggest weaknesses is on the right where we really miss Thierry, as Fran Perez and Foulquier have struggled. Getting in at half-time would have been a good result but I've no idea what we were doing at the end. Lino was in acres of space and scored the opener. Annoyingly, he even celebrated. As it's late here I'm probably going to switch off, so use this to comment.

Valencia 1-0 Athletic Bilbao match thread

 Which Valencia manager has the highest win % this century? The answer is not an obvious one. Ernesto Valverde won nearly 55% of his games in charge, beating Rafa and the 3rd place: Quique Sanchez Flores. Now at Bilbao and doing well that indicates what a tough game today will be.

After a morale-boosting comfortable win at Cadiz last time, Valencia came crashing down to earth with a tame Copa exit against Celta. After the game a few idiots in our fanbase ganged up on Javi Guerra on social media leading to him deleting his Twitter account. We need to be patient with these young guys.

Apart from the Afcon absences and Andre Almeida, Valencia had a more or less full squad for this one and has gone for what likes a 4-4-2 with Diego Lopez in a supporting striker role.

Bilbao come into this game in excellent form with 6 wins in a row in all competitions. They haven't lost in La Liga since conceding a late goal at Nou Camp on 21st October and have gone 7-3-0 since then including wins over Atletico Madrid, Sociedad and Las Palmas in recent games. Both Inaki Williams and Guruzeta have been on form for them and our defence will need to be on their toes tonight. A win would be golden, but a draw wouldn't be the worst result for us considering the context.

HALF-TIME
An intense first half. Bilbao have set up very well with their front four cutting off our passing lanes and showing strong defence. With a possible exception at the end of the half I don't think we've been on target. Bad news for Valencia in the 13th minute when Canos pulled up and had to be replaced by Yaremchuk. Bilbao had the better chances, a pull back in the 3rd minute creating danger and twice Foulquier being beaten for pace by Nico Williams but the latter's shots were easily handled by Mamardashvili. Foulquier overall had a very good game, I think that's 3 in a row. For us, Fran Perez messed up a couple of half chances but made amends near the end with a recovery and a pass which found Duro, but his lay-off was to Guillamon who shot wide. Valencia finished the half well forcing a succession of corners. Bilbao still have the edge so it's important our defence stays switched on. This is a game that a single goal could decide.

FULL-TIME
It was indeed a game that a single goal decided and happily it was ours. Bilbao missed a good chance early in the 2nd half but Valencia then continued where we'd left off at the end of the 1st half, edging Bilbao. Duro missed a good chance, trying to brush it in. Just as we were all cursing him, Gaya put a great cross to the back post and Duro, not the tallest striker, headed home at the back post. Thereafter we managed to stalemate them well in both defence and midfield. Baraja played it safe with the subs, effectively switching to double full backs. This meant taking off Yaremchuk, it's very unusual to see a sub who's not injured being taken off. The changes worked and we neutralised them for a hard fought 3 points. 

At the start of the season, with Rafa Mir strongly linked many of us were worried about what would happen if we were reliant on Duro all season. How wrong we were. The only players who have scored more penalty goals this season than Duro are Bellingham and Morata. An addition we do have to thank Bordalas for.

This is the first time since 8th April 2018 that Valencia have won 4 league games in a row. Baraja overtook Voro's 40 games in charge in the game versus Celta and overtook Celades' 41 games in charge with this game. In the Lim era only Bordalas (46), Nuno (63) and Marcelino (110) have managed more. Both he and the team deserve big credit for punching above their weight this season.   

Valencia - Celta (Copa del Rey)

So for the second time this season, Valencia face Celta at Mestalla in the Copa del Rey. Celta must be very annoyed by the change in the Copa format: since their 2-legged game versus Sociedad on 1 November 2018 they haven't played a single Copa game at home at Balaidos. 

Deja Vu

Valencia come into the game in very good shape with 4 wins in a row, a feat not achieved since December 2021. The performances have been solid and the players clearly know what to do. Even if the opponents like Cartagena, Cadiz and Villarreal haven't been that great, we still need to beat whoever is in front of us.

We have most players available for this one bar Almeida, Diakhaby and Amallah. Both Paulista and Gaya had slight injury worries last time so are a little doubtful and we may see Yarek and Jesus Vazquez in their place. Other than that, I don't expect many changes since last game. Jaume will obviously start and Yaremchuk is due some minutes. 

After a poor start (1-5-8) which saw Rafa Benitez close to the exit door, Celta have stabilised. Since losing in Bilbao in late October Celta have lost just once in the league (2-4-1) with 2 wins against lower league teams in the Copa as well. That included a 0-0 stalemate at Mestalla in a dull game. They have Cervi and Aidoo out, with Bamba on Afcon duty. Celta's new danger man is Anastasios Douvikas who was the top scorer in the Dutch league last season. He's on 7 goals this season, though 4 have been in Copa. Iago Aspas is fit and though he hasn't featured yet in Copa, should get some minutes as this is when it starts to get serious.

Possibly the only surprise is Mari in the line-up.

17 minutes in and disaster. First Jaume messed up with a corner allowing them to score and then a few minutes later Diego Lopez made a clumsy challenge and conceded a penalty to put us 2-0 down. A mountain to climb.

Valencia however have come more into it and cut distances in the 28th minute when we pulled one back from a penalty. What has been missing has been the final ball and we've struggled with their press. Half-time. Neither keeper has impressed me in this one so I think there are more goals. The question is: will they be ours?

FULL-TIME
They scored a third. I did say that Douvikas was the danger man. So now it's focus on the league time. A comedown after the good performance against Cadiz. The fact is we never looked good in the Copa this season. Even against lower tier sides we struggled and this was as favourable a draw in the last 16 as we could have hoped for. The stats for tonight tell the story: we were wasteful and they weren't.

Cadiz 1-4 Valencia match thread

Valencia come into this game in more optimistic shape than we've been in a while. The expected relegation fight hasn't materialised. The team has 26 points and is 11 points ahead of the relegation zone. With the bottom 3 performing much worse than last season, 37 points would probably be enough to stay up this year. In other words, barring a late collapse, we can expect a more relaxed second half of the season than last year and if we can put a few good results together, we can even dream of European qualification.

Today's game is crucial in that. Cadiz come into the game in terrible form, just 2 wins all season, 1 of which came on the opening day with the other over 4 months ago on 1st September when they beat Villarreal. Since then they've drawn 8 and lost 7. A defeat at fellow strugglers Granada in the last game piles the pressure on more. In many ways they're turning into draw specialists with 5 draws from the last 6. Their biggest problem has been scoring: just 4 in the last 8 games and 14 overall, easily the worst in the division. Valencia fans will joke that that's not a surprise as their forward line is like a list of Valencia has-beens: Negredo, Maxi Gomez and Sobrino. They've played 8, 17 and 16 games respectively and scored... none. Negredo has only played a total of 44 minutes and as he'll be 39 this summer is surely in his last season. Sobrino is unavailable for this game due to a red card in the last game. Ex-Levante player Roger Marti is also out. Cadiz' main (only?) danger man is Chris Ramos who's scored a respectable 5 goals.

If we have any hopes of finishing higher, this is exactly the type of away game we need to win. That's part of the problem. While Valencia have been solid at Mestalla, with 5-2-2, the opposite is true on the road, with a dismal 2-3-5 record. Our absences include Almeida and Thierry. Pepelu is also probably out for this one, while Diakhaby and Amallah are at AfCon. Yaremchuk has had flu and is also under question so if Baraja continues with the recent 4-4-2 we may see Duro-Mari up front, although Diego Lopez is possible there as well. In the last game Valencia managed 3 wins in a row for the first time since early March 2022, I'm hopeful we can continue this run as a draw would be a letdown and a defeat a disaster.

So in the end, Pepelu made it with Diego Lopez the second striker.

FIRST HALF
Valencia started well, dealing with Cadiz' press and got the opener on 7 minutes. A decent team goal with Foulquier hitting a nice through pass, Diego Lopez beating the left back for pace and his cut back was touched past the keeper for the opener. Unfortunately after that, Valencia were wasteful and inconsistent in possession and gave away a stupid free kick on the edge of the area. It hit Pepelu's arms when jumping, penalty for me sorry to say and they equalised. Our only other chance came when we recovered and Canos shot was blocked by the defender. There was a dubious call when Hugo Duro got elbowed in the face and pushed over.

Looked a red to me, but was only given as a yellow. A frustrating first half. 

SECOND HALF
It got better. First Canos hit a super pass through for Diego Lopez who again used his pace to get into the area. Duro looked better placed but instead of passing, Diego slotted it nicely past Ledesma.

Much of the rest of the half was, as our games with them often are, very scrappy with Cadiz looking like a poor man's Getafe. Luckily, they lived up to their recent form and created little. We missed a golden chance to make it three when Mari was found at the far post, but fumbled the ball between his feet and the chance went. With Cadiz piling forward near the end and even their keeper joining the attack, but we broke out and the ever lively Diego Lopez found himself on a 2-on-1. Again, he made the right decision, finding Guerra and Javi also stayed cool to beat the keeper in a one-on-one. Game over then? Not quite. Cadiz switched off at the end and from a throw-in we got to the by-line and Mari made up for his earlier miss by putting the ball across for Jesus Vazquez to score his first senior goal.

As I said, we've messed up so often against teams like this but today we were clinical when we had to be with the pace of our young players making the difference. Diego Lopez had gone through a period of poor form but he was brilliant today. That's 4 wins in a row and the first time since December 2021 that we've both won 3 in a row in the league and scored 4 away from home. Baraja now has the 3rd highest win % of any Valencia manager in the Lim era. Now only 2 points off 7th and 3 points off 6th. Job well done.

Valencia and Baraja's stats so far

When Rubén Baraja was appointed Valencia manager few people were excited. His previous managerial record was not so good with short stints at a number of Segunda clubs, none of which lasted more than a season. The feeling was that he'd be like many ex-players who'd taken the role: a stopgap until a more permanent appointment. But with Valencia staring at relegation, there was not exactly a big queue of people wanting to take over. Baraja has spoken about his early coaching here and about his first year at Valencia here.

Yet, to general surprise, including my own, Baraja has done much better than expected. I thought the team would perform similar to last season and expected a long, difficult and nervy fight against relegation this season. At the halfway point after 19 games last season Valencia were 1 point off relegation

Table after 19 games last season

and only survived on the last day. Now, Valencia have 6 points more than at the same stage last season, are 11 points above the drop zone and can even dare to eye European qualification.

Baraja has been helped in all this by the emergence and promotion of a number of talented youngsters from the academy (some of it forced on him due to Meriton refusing to buy anyone) like Javi Guerra, Mosquera, Gasiorowski, Diego Lopez, Fran Perez etc. But the team also has what it's lacked for a long time: a local identity.  Instead of mercenaries and loanees who we're developing for other clubs we are cheering for a group who care about the badge and that helps us punch above our weight. In the last game against Villarreal, our starting 11 featured 4 academy products and 2 more players (Canos and Pepelu) who have been Valencia fans since childhood, while all 5 subs were academy players.

A knock-on effect of that is that the atmosphere in Mestalla is as positive as it's ever been. I went to watch Sociedad during the Emery era. Greizmann scored the only goal of the game against us and the 2nd half was filled with whistles, boos and white hankies. I went earlier this season to see us play Sociedad. We lost by the same scoreline but the fans applauded the players off, the feeling was we'd played as well as we could. This is reflected in the attendances. 43,833 is the average for this season. That's the first time we've broken 43,000 since 2006/07 and the highest attendance since the 2004/05 season (when we were defending league champions.) 

As for Baraja himself, he's now lasted 39 games. He's 5 games away from equalling his longest managerial tenure. He overtook Javi Gracia in the previous game, will equal Voro in the next game and Celades the one after that. By March he'll have overtaken Bordalas' 46 games in charge, which would leave him behind only Nuno's 63 games and Marcelino's 110 in the Lim era. Baraja has won 41% of his games in charge, again that puts him behind only Nuno and Marcelino, a credible achievement when you consider all preceding coaches had better squads. It does admittedly see him still well behind some of his contemporaries like Pellegrino and Djukic, who both managed a nearly 48% win record. That winning 41% of games is seen as good or acceptable is a sad comment on our decline in the last decade. 

Tactically, Baraja has mostly used a 4-2-3-1 or 4-2-1-3 up to now, with a double pivot. (Pepelu has been a perfect addition for this.) The team has usually used a high press, effectively defending from the front. The team has focused on speedy counter-attacks, helped by the youth of the team. In more recent games, Baraja has shown signs of moving to a 4-4-2. It's in attack where Baraja has shown his limitations as a coach. The team hasn't added much beyond the "flank and cross" approach we've used in recent seasons, with over-relance on Gaya in particular. Another problem has been the team dropping off in the later part of games, throwing away points by conceding late goals. That's down inexperience but also needs coaching to fix.

Overall, I think Baraja has significant limitations. If this was the Valencia of 10 years ago or even 5 years ago, then we'd hear more calls for Baraja to go. I also think if we ever got an owner with clue, who was prepared to invest, then Baraja's days would be numbered. However, the Valencia of 10 years ago has gone and for now, we're stuck with the diminished version. That version needs a coach who is good with working with young players and who commands the respect of Mestalla, so that the home support don't get jittery and impatient  when a few results don't go our way. Baraja has both: he added to his legendary player status by putting his neck on the line to save us last season and has produced much better than expected results this season. Ultimately, unless results take a significant downturn, I don't see any reason why he shouldn't be in charge at the beginning of next season. The Valencia manager job is a poisoned chalice and it's difficult to imagine any top level coaches being interested. A bit of stability is what is needed for now.

 

Winter transfer window rumours: Koba sold? Mir in?

 Over the last 10 years, Valencia's January additions have been a mixed to disappointing bag.

2015: Enzo Perez
2016: Cheryshev, Siquiera
2017: Zaza, Orellana
2018: Coquelin, Vietto
2019: Sobrino, Roncaglia
2020: Florenzi
2021: Cutrone, Ferro, Oliva
2022: Bryan Gil, Comert, Moriba
2023: no one

"Anyone remember me?"

With a few exceptions like Zaza and Coquelin most of the additions haven't improved the side much, with the very forgettable 2021 trio being a classic case in point. In that context it's best to keep our expectations low, indeed it wouldn't be a massive shock if, like last year, we signed no one.

On the positive side, for all their flaws, Meriton has resisted the temptation to move key players out in the winter window, preferring to wait until summer. Daniel Wass has probably been the highest profile player moved out and even then he was in his last half year of contract so cashing in wasn't the worst move.

As of now, the players the club are most interested in moving on are at least one of the defensive trio of Cenk, Diakhaby and Paulista. With players like Mosquera and Gasiorowski coming through it's felt that someone can go in defence.

Some of the criticism of Cenk goes way too far, I've seen "worse than Aderllan Santos" and nonsense like that. His stats and performances last season were acceptable. What was dubious was the club's decision to pay 5m for him when other positions were a bigger priority and retaining Kluivert would have made more sense. Cenk has also had a poor season. The problem is that no offers are forthcoming.

Paulista presents the club with a problem. He's an experienced player who's had a satisfactory season. His contract is due to expire in the summer but there is a clause that says that if he plays 7 more league games (at least 45 minutes in each) then he automatically renews for another season. He's been a loyal club servant who's stuck with the club through bad times, but the problem is that he's on a much higher salary than most of the squad. With his injuries and the fact he's now 33 it is probably time to say thanks and bye. 

As in August, Valencia's main target is Rafa Mir. As I reported then the problem was Sevilla's high asking price, originally €14m, later reducing to €8-9m, covering Mir's €3.4m a year salary and Sevilla insisting on a compulsory buy clause in the loan, with Valencia wanting an option. Fast forward 5 months and Sevilla's hand is much weaker. They're in financial difficulties, facing a tough relegation battle, on their 3rd permanent coach of the season and needing to move players out to make additions. Also Mir, whether it's because he doesn't want to be there or not or for another reason, hasn't had a great season. Sevilla now want €2m for a loan (to cover wages mainly) with €6m to buy Mir. Valencia are still pushing for this to be optional.

You might ask, if Mir is playing badly, why bother? The reason is that Baraja wants a physical striker to compete up front. He and Mir know each other well from Baraja's time managing the youth team and so he would need no adaptation. Really, if we could get a loan with a buy option, I'd trust Baraja on this as it wouldn't hurt to have extra competition up front.

The club's position is that there's no money until someone moves out, but there's now a lifeline. Koba Koindredi may go to Sporting in Portugal for 6 to 7 million (a figure that may drop if Valencia retain a sell-on clause.) If we got that money it would clear the way for Mir. Really the whole thing has Mendes written all over it but there don't seem to be any other moves in the pipeline. Valencia, as usual, dropped the ball on Carlos Vicente, one of the better players in Segunda this season, who would have come for 600,000, but the club dallied too long with its penny pinching and the result was that he signed for Alaves instead.

Copa del Rey news and draw

Yesterday felt very deja vu in the Copa. For the second time in 3 seasons Valencia played at Cartagena and Alfredo Ortuno scored against us, just as he did 2 seasons ago. Our first half was really poor with the game only tilting in our favour after 45 minutes when Cartagena were reduced to 10 men and we started bringing in the subs. The result was exactly the same as then too, an unconvincing 2-1 win for us. Probably the brightest spot of the night was the debut of David Ortobi, a local boy from Valencia's port neighbourhood who became our youngest debutant at 16 years and 2 months, breaking the record set by Diego Ribera in February 1994. Otorbi has been tipped for big things and looked very assured. Of course, given what's happened with in the last decade with other exciting youth products like Alcacer, Fran Villalba, KangIn, Ferran, Musah etc probably the likelihood is that he'll be sold at some point, so hoping for a good fee is probably the best we'll get. Other than that, this game reinforced what we already knew: the squad is thin and the back-up players not that great.

So in the last 16 the draw was made by our ex-loanee Mario Suarez. We avoided the lower division sides and instead got

Celta at home. In a way, that's good for us, Celta are in poor form and battling against relegation. They also haven't won against us at Mestalla in 7 years. That win came, ironically enough, in the Copa when an injury and suspension crisis for Valencia meant we had to start a central defence of Mario Suarez and Javi Jimenez.

The game will take place next midweek, either on 16th or 17th.

Valencia 2-0 Cadiz match thread

 I'm off to Mestalla soon for this one and hoping for a win. After a positive start it's been a struggle for Valencia since beating Atletico Madrid with 2 draws and 2 defeats. On the positive side, we do have Gaya back for this one but Canos, Diakhaby, Almeida are all out to add to the longer term absences of Mari and Jesus Vazquez. For Cadiz' part, their strike force looks like a who's who of recent Valencia striker flops: Negredo, Sobrino and Maxi Gomez. They're also coming in with 2 draws and 2 defeats. This game marks a quarter of the season already gone. A win would take Valencia up to 8th place and mark a better than expected start. Lose and question marks about the team start afresh.

One major piece of football news affecting Valencia was the choice of 2030 World Cup hosts. To my surprise (I thought South America would get it for centenary reasons) it's going to Spain, Portugal, Morocco, with an insulting and awkward token game each played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. This looks more like a way to clear the path for Saudi Arabia to host 2034 than anything. As Nou Mestalla is one of the bid venues, this puts extra pressure on the club to finally get the stadium done.

I'll be back later from this one, so please use this as a placeholder for comments. I'll be back to normal service around the middle of November.

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Well, quickly, that was a fairly comfortable win. Amallah was impressive and linked well with Gaya for the first goal. Thierry always a threat and provided for Duro for the second. We were greatly helped by Cadiz having a man sent off in the 22nd minute. There was a huge downpour at the start but that didn't stop it being a good win. We had 3 good breakaway chances to make it 3 but squandered all of them, with Fran Perez the main culprit. They did little. The game marked the return of Maxi Gomez to Mestalla with Sobrino also featuring. Cadiz seem to have a thing for Valencia flop strikers as Negredo was also in their squad. Both Maxi and Sobrino did what they did best at Mestalla: run around a bit uselessly. Foulquier for Thierry was where the problems started. Stupid mistakes from him and fellow sub Guillamon gave them golden chances which they thankfully didn't take. 8th at the quarter point of the season is a solid start.

Valencia - Real Sociedad match thread

 I'm going to Mestalla for this one so another short thread.

After the high of the win over Atletico Madrid, Valencia returned to the usual inconsistency with a shaky performance against the league's bottom club, Almeria. We could easily have lost that game. Why do the team always do this?

For tonight, we do at least have Paulista and Yaremchuk available. Baraja has effectively said that Yaremchuk will get at least some minutes, so we should see his debut. Foulquier, Sergi Canos, Jesus Vazquez and Alberto Mari remain injured. 

Tonight's opponents Sociedad have made a solid enough start 2-3-1 with the defeat by 1 goal away to Real Madrid and with a midfield and attack including people like Oyarzabal, Kubo, Brais Mendes and Zubimendi and 12 goals scored so far, our defence will really have to be on their toes. Previous results against them have been all over the place. We beat them when we're weak then throw away points in good seasons, so I won't make any prediction for this, but I'm hoping for a good home win.

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Well, I just got back from the stadium and have mixed feelings. For the first 30 minutes I thought we were the better team but then we conceded a dumb goal from a stupid mistake by Diakhaby. He's like Valencia in miniature: has a couple of good games, makes you think he's turned the corner and it will get better from now on and then reverts to business as usual. The second killer was the sending off of Amallah, which seemed harsh from where I was sitting. He'd been looking good up to then and almost playing as a second striker. That killed us off. I thought we'd fold in the second half but we fought well and a draw would have been a fairer result. I thought we were weak on the left, Diego Lopez did little, Gaya not much more. Thierry did well handling their winger and Fran Perez was lively. Duro was active but had very little service. Guerra is obviously a good prospect but his decision making tonight was off and Mamardashvili's distribution could have been better. I liked the little I saw of Yaremchuk's debut. He was active and a physical presence.

Overall, Sociedad clearly had a better squad than us. (Qualifying for Champions League gets you money you can use to buy better players... someone should tell our owner. ) But we mostly held our own. If it hadn't been for the sending off we could have got a draw. The big problem remains the squad depth as evidenced by the fact that our final defence consisted of 4 central defenders. With Vazquez out and Gaya often injured, that's a problem. On to the next game.

Almeria - Valencia match thread

 I'm off to Valencia tomorrow so with apologies and unless anyone else wants to do them, these will be shorter than usual until November, but a placeholder for comments is better than nothing.

Valencia produced a strong and convincing performance in the previous game to earn the first win over Atletico Madrid in nearly a decade. Nevertheless, the team remains an enigma. Doing well against bigger teams but not so well against smaller clubs. At least that's an improvement on last season when we were rubbish against everyone. So which Valencia will show up tomorrow? 

In team news, there are several absences which highlight the problems of a thin squad. Paulista is out likely for the next 2 games. He started the season well, so this is unfortunate. Foulquier similarly should be back soon. Not such a loss some fans will say, but with barely anyone else who can play as right back, it's better to have him for the last 20-25 minutes to give Thierry a rest than playing someone out of position. The case of Vazquez is similar, though he's more promising than Foulquier and his absence is sorely missed as Gaya needs the rest. Canos unfortunately got injured last game and should be out for several to come. I'd expect Diego Lopez to cover for him, with Amallah saved for the Sociedad game, though it could be the reverse. Lastly, there's the long term injury to Mari, a player who was showing promise and problematic with the team so thin up front.

Our rivals Almeria sit bottom of the table. (Useless fact: they're the most recently formed La Liga team, formed in 1989.) Like us, they narrowly escaped relegation last season An 87th minute penalty to equalise in the final game against already relegated Espanyol was all that kept them up. They did take 4 points from us last season and only a missed penalty at Mestalla prevented them from taking all 6. This season their start has been terrible: losing the first two games at home to R Madrid and Rayo and then drawing at Cadiz. Their home game vs Celta was mixed. They went 2 down, fought back to equalise, squandered 2 one-on-one chances with the goalkeeper and then lost to an 87th minute goal. In their last game at Villarreal they took the lead, but eventually lost to a 94th minute goal. On paper, this is a team we should beat easily and the type of game we must win if we have any dreams of a top half finish. In reality? We've thrown away points in so many such games before, so I hope for a win, but don't know what to expect.

The mood around Valencia now is weird. On the one hand, expectations have never been lower. Most of us would be happy with a comfortable 9th or 10th place finish, something that would have been seen as a disaster a few seasons ago. On the other hand, there seems to be a buoyancy and excitement around the team. Attendances for this season so far (obviously early days with only 3 home games) have been nearly 43,000, the highest since 14/15 under Nuno. (We haven't exceeded 43,000 since 2006/7.)

The attitude seems to be that even though the team is much diminished and one of the weakest Valencia squads this century, we at least have an exciting crop of young players from our academy to cheer for. Mosquerra, Guerra, Fran Perez, Diego Lopez and Mari might be raw in most cases, but they're our guys who've come through the youth system and will bleed for the club badge. 

It's hard to say what line-up Baraja will go for, especially with rotation and a midweek game against Sociedad to think about, but I'd expect something like Mamardashvili; Gaya, Diakhaby, Mosquerra, Thierry; Pepelu, Guerra, Almeida; Diego Lopez, Duro, Fran Perez. I would hope Guillamon can be eased back into the squad, Cenk will almost certainly play some of the game (it wouldn't surprise me to see him start instead of Mosquerra) and we may finally see some minutes for Yaremchuk.

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Unfortunately, I think it was the weaker version of Valencia that showed up tonight. We're lucky to come away from that with a point as Mamardashvili saved us a few times. Our goals were great, super pace and finish from Diego Lopez after a link-up with Javi Guerra. It was Guerra who got our second as well with solid play from Fran Perez to create the chance. Sadly both times we couldn't hold the lead and the defending and marking was really poor in this game. Next up: Sociedad at home.

Valencia vs Atletico Madrid

 Valencia tomorrow comes up against one of their most annoying opponents. 

It's been nearly 9 years since we blitzed them on 4th October 2014, scoring 3 goals in the first 13 minutes and having Alves save a penalty for a 3-1 win in the early part of Nuno's first season.

Sadly, it's been a story of massive frustration since then. Even though we've beaten every other team, including Barcelona and Real Madrid, this fixture has been an awful one for us. 17 games. 6 draws and 11 defeats. We thought we'd done it early last year, taking a 2-goal lead away only for them to score in the 64th, 91st and 94th minutes. Sorry to say I don't expect to see this change tomorrow and think we'll lose by a couple.

I'll be out all day, so will miss this game and putting this post up as a "placeholder" for comments during and after the game.

9/11 - A sad anniversary

 11th September is a significant event in recent history, in global politics it means the 2001 attacks in New York. With apologies to those affected by that, 11th September 2019 is also a sad anniversary for Valencia fans. After 2 successful seasons, which saw the club secure back-to-back Champions League qualifications, a Europa League semi-final and the first silverware in 12 years by beating Barcelona in our centenary year, the ownership decided to destroy a good thing, pressing the reset button, dismantling a successful sporting structure under Alemany and Longoria and beginning the club's current downwards spiral into mediocrity. 

All of this because Lim couldn't contain his ego and wanted to mess and fool around again in the club's business after years of leaving it to professionals and getting 60 million upwards of Champions League cash a season in return. Marcelino claimed his firing was that he disobeyed Lim's orders to deliberately lose in the Copa. Since Gary Neville said in a later interview that Lim had told him to get out of the Copa as quickly as possible this seems very likely. Marcelino had also given some interviews which were straying into being provocative, but that happens and a compromise could have been reached. 

Bizarrely and depressingly, some of our fans at the time actually applauded this recklessness on the grounds that stability wasn't important, Marcelino's style was boring and some of the young players weren't being given a chance. (Just take a look at some of the comments at the time on the Facebook group or on here.) Mainly KangIn they were thinking of.... what happened there? Some even argued Celades would be a stopgap until we got someone like Pochettino or Ten Hag. I'm sorry, but talk about naive! Instead we got worse in the form of Bordalas and the nothingness of Gracia and finishes of 9th, 13th, 9th and 16th. The current trajectory seems to lead to one place: relegation.

Pretty much everything I predicted back then came true and worse: 
"Under Lim, those youth will never be the future lifeblood of the club anyway. They'll be sold, Alcacer-style, as soon as a richer club puts a chunk of cash down. For me, that's demoralising and seriously makes me question my support. Not for Valencia, but for Lim's Valencia, since his way is to remain a permanent c-list club, an also ran to the elite, who exist primarily as a means for him to profit and for Mendes to make money by showcasing talent.

We will never be at the level of a Bayern, Barcelona, Man City or Juventus but I think an Atletico Madrid style position is possible and is exactly where we were in the 2000s. This week definitively closes the door on that. Lim clearly will never ever accept that success can only be achieved through stability and trusting the club to professionals and has just proved it be pressing the "restore to year 2016 factory settings" button.

You can forget any ideas of Celades just being a stopgap for a serious high level coach. Celades is indeed unlikely to last long, but what serious coach will sign up for a project that sacks them when they achieve everything doable in two seasons? Had this before with Emery and Nuno "we'll be better off with anyone else" and each time we got chaos and regression. Change is NOT always for the better."

Sadly, it should be clear now to virtually everyone that Lim couldn't care less about the club. His mouthpiece Lay Hoon said in a recent interview that the goal now is to avoid relegation. That is the limit of these people's aspirations. I could write a long list of things these people could do better, but it would be a waste of time as I know it wouldn't happen. Until Meriton goes, that's exactly where we'll be at. 

Alaves - Valencia match thread

So it's a tricky opponent today in Vitoria. Valencia have Almeida back in the line-up but again we see the problem with not doing transfer business in time. None of the 3 latest additions are judged ready yet.

10 minutes in and it's a ludicrous start. Valencia gave away a penalty in the first minute when Mamardashvili fouled after a poor back pass. He saved the penalty but then it was retaken for encroachment. He saved yet again! I guess Mamar penalty saves are like buses, you wait a while and then 2 come at once. A fat lot of good it did us: poor defending with Diakhaby failing to clear and it goes in off Cenk. The stupidity of not adding a central defender in the window comes back to kill us, with Diakhaby back in defence and back to mischief, costing us with mistakes.

FULL-TIME
Pathetic. Anyone still want to disagree that we're fighting to stay up this year after a poor transfer window? The squad is weaker than last year and we saw today how just 1 injury, to Paulista, messes everything up. The squad is paper thin as shown by subbing off Duro for an unknown youth player. Both teams squandered a few chances, but I don't think this result was undeserved at all. If anything, we deserved to lose by more. Only bright spot was that Mosquera did well.

Another poor transfer window closes.

 Another mediocre transfer window for Valencia has just closed. Yes, I know that some will argue that the players brought are upgrades, but they're not looking at the bigger picture. Look at the chart below. That's the value of Valencia's squad on 1st of September of every year of the Lim era, in millions of euros, adjusted for inflation.

The trend is clear. Valencia came off its worst season in 35 years. We narrowly escaped an embarrassing relegation.

A normal club would have reacted to that appropriately: by hitting the ground running when the market opened. Valencia had 2 problems last season. The first was having a number of mercenaries. Players on loan contracts who weren't committed. The bigger problem was lack of goals. Who was Valencia's remaining highest scorer from the 2022-23 season on 30th July? The 4th highest scorer of the 2022-23 season? Give up? It was this guy...

Yep, Diakhaby, with 3 goals, was Valencia's 4th highest scorer last season!  Ahead of him were

Kluivert 9 goals
Lino 8 goals
Cavani 7 goals.

None of those were prolific but after letting all 3 go, a normal club would have identified that and made strong efforts early in the window to improve. Instead we get the same rubbish and failure to learn.

Instead of strengthening the squad, the club went the other way. 14 players left, 4 joined with 1 loan being made permanent. Most of the changes are below (with Esquerdo and Castillejo's exits missing and Yaremchuk joining.)

Overall, by position:

GOALKEEPER

Herrerin is probably the least controversial exit. He was brought in for emergency cover. He played all of 12 minutes for us in the Copa versus La Nucia. Thanks and goodbye. Not losing Mamardashvili is, like the dog that didn't bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, significant. A positive, since we're better with him than without.

DEFENCE
Keeping Gaya is another positive, but getting rid of Comert is stupid. Not to say that Comert was anything amazing, but his low cost and adaptation to the squad and La Liga and lack of replacement are all questionable. Lato is a loss. A loyal club servant and good back-up. Keeping Guillamon (better in defence than midfield) would be a positive, if only Baraja would play him. Though Paulista started well here, his injury history means we're weaker here.

MIDFIELD
This saw the biggest changes. Racic is another I wouldn't have given away. Musah is a big long term loss for me. Yes, he had an awful last season but I think he was a good long term prospect. Unfortunately, money was needed. Pepelu and Amallah look like good additions. With the emergence of Guerra, this is the only area where we seem to be as fine as last season.

FORWARD
Cavani, Lino, Kluivert, Castillejo all gone. Only Canos and Yaremchuk added. The latter could be worthwhile, but after wasting 2 months of the the transfer window chasing Rafa Mir, we are clearly weaker there. Yaremchuk has actually scored a hat-trick this season, but against an Icelandic team in Europa League qualifying. Him, Duro and Mari, injured until Christmas, makes it a poor set-up.

All in all, I see the squad, despite 1 or 2 decent additions, as weaker and lacking in depth. I don't see anything in this window to say that Meriton have learned. Quite the opposite: I don't go for conspiracies but often it looks like these guys are deliberately sabotaging us. Forget any hope of a top half finish and let's hope we stay up.

Valencia sign Amallah

Valencia have confirmed the addition of Selim Amallah, who becomes the 4th player to join us in the summer transfer window, counting Cenk. Amallah is mainly an attacking midfielder, but can also play central midfield or left wing. He joined Valladolid back in January and managed 2 goals in his 7 appearances, reasonable for a relegated club. He's the first Moroccan player at the club since Munir in 2016-17, though he also has Belgian citizenship, having been born there, so doesn't take up a non-EU spot.

Valencia paid 150,000 for his loan and have a buy option of 7.5 million. After the foolishness of developing players like Kluivert and Lino for other clubs last season without realistic buy options, Valencia have smartened up in this window. 

The club still has hopes of adding 1 or 2 players before the window closes late on Friday. Chief importance is a forward after Cavani and Marcos Andre's exits. The problem is that, after dallying all summer, there are less than 70 hours left. The Rafa Mir deal seems to have fallen through. The main issue seems to be that Sevilla were ready to sell him, but wanted cash and a definite sale, while Valencia were only offering a loan with buy option, which wouldn't guarantee Sevilla funds to get a replacement. Valencia don't want to splash the cash, preferring a "try before you buy" approach. The club's main plan B is now rumoured to be Colombian Rafael Borre, who plays for Eintracht Frankfurt. He'd an ok first season for them with 8 in 31 league games, plus 4 in 8 in Europe, but his form dropped off last year with just 2 goals in 32 league games. People who've watched him seem to rate him ok, but these scoring statistics don't excite me. 

A winger is the 2nd wish from the club and we will see what happens there. There has been no more news on Ivan Jaime and previous windows have seen players (often from the Mendes stable) emerge out of nowhere at the last minute.

Valencia 1-2 Osasuna match thread

Valencia's transfer dealings continue to move at a glacial pace. The Rafa Mir transfer looks doubtful, a plan B, Lucas Boye looks like he's going to Granada instead, Borja Mayoral looks dubious and we're left with names like Martin Braithwaite to fill the void. Mir still seems the best of an average bunch as all the other names have very poor scoring records. If we want a forward who doesn't score much, we already have Hugo Duro. The addition of Selim Amallah is said to be closer, but how many times have we heard that?

Negativity aside and out of the way, Valencia have a great chance to extend their positive start today. Under Baraja, we're 5-3-1 at Mestalla and today's opponents Osasuna are one of only 2 teams (Celta is the other) who we got all 6 points against last season.

Osasuna started well, winning at Celta 2-0 with our former youth player Ruben Garcia netting. In the follow-up, they came unstuck at home, losing to Bilbao 2-0 with some poor defending gifting the goals. They look a solid team without any standout players, just a good range of La Liga experience with guys like Moi Gomez, Ruben Pena etc. What will benefit us is that Chimy Avila, their top scorer last season, got sent off last game and is suspended for today. I'll post the line-up when available, but I'd expect more or less the same as last game with the only question being whether Javi Guerra will start. Canos is of course available but I'd be very surprised to see him feature for more than a few minutes as a late sub as he hasn't trained much with the team.

Guerra, as predicted is the only change. 23 minutes in and Valencia are 1-0 down. Thierry mistimed the tackle and they scored from the penalty.

FULL-TIME
We lost 2-1. A disappointing result in a game that we deserved at least a draw from. I didn't think we played badly but the issue is the obvious one that everyone that apparently Meriton can see. We needed a striker BEFORE the season started given the clear issues up front in the 2nd half of last season. Good to see Duro score but he struggles as lone forward (I think he could have uses as a supporting forward.)

Did you all see the joke at the end where they gave him man of the match?