da betcris： “When you’re going through hell – keep going,” said Winston Churchill.
da supremo： To be honest, most people will feel for Gary Neville at this moment in time. Who likes to go off and try something and fail? No-one. So whether you are a Manchester United fan or not, it’s a shame that this isn’t working out for him.
And it isn’t in spades. No La Liga win in over two months. The only wins were in the Copa del Rey, until the 7-0 thrashing by Barcelona. Valencia fans must have been wondering ‘what next?’ ever since the Englishman came in as manager on a short-term contract.
It appears obvious that Neville will be leaving in the summer, but reports (via ESPN) suggest that he will be safe until then, as Valencia slip further down the table.
For the Manchester United legend, this must be the absolute kick in the guts. He must have gone there with his own high standards, his own ambitions and expectations, the will to win – as he did as a player, only to see it all start to crumble about him.
England’s No. 2 is in danger of losing that role, especially if Roy Hodgson doesn’t stay. If he were to lose his place in the England set-up, some might suggest that was a good thing bearing in mind the defensive display against Spain, ironically.
However, with the experience Neville has, our game surely needs someone of his quality and his stature, but why is he finding his first test in management so hard? Could it be that Valencia was too big a step for a first role? Would it have been better to start at a non-league or lower division club and work his way up, as many have done before him? It helped that he knows the owner, Peter Lim. The Singaporean businessman also has a 50% stake in Salford City with Neville and Co. Lim was interviewed by the Mestalla club (via the Daily Mail) and confirmed that Neville wasn’t picked because of their friendship.
“I picked Gary not because he is a good friend; Gary is a good coach, who happened to be a friend. I think that has to be very clear to everyone,”
“I look at him, he has got the potential in him, I knew him for a while and his football knowledge is tremendous. He is a top pundit in the UK. I chose him because of his knowledge of football and everything that is around football.I know a lot of people say “oh no, he has never been a coach,” but I do believe that he has got the ability to become a good coach.”
You can’t fault Lim’s logic, but sadly, this is looking like a disaster that Neville needs to turn around.
With the fans openly calling for his dismissal after the defeat to Real Betis, no league wins and a drop, worse than his predecessor Nuno Espirito Santo, who has almost certainly lost the dressing room, this scenario is doing Neville no favours. Any thoughts of succeeding Hodgson must now be thoughts of some far off point in the future, along with similar thoughts at Old Trafford.
It was never going to be easy, that’s for sure. First managerial role he takes is a big one and more perplexing is the fact that it is abroad. The club were already in some turmoil behind the scenes with all kinds of politics at boardroom level taking place. The super agent Jorge Mendes is said to be behind some of the issues, but successors are already being lined up for the beleaguered Neville.
Neville walked into a club with injuries to key players and a losing mentality, so is all of this surprising and his fault?
Maybe experience and being a good pundit – analysing players and a game – don’t translate easily from the English league to the Spanish, but with a reputation in bits, where does Gary Neville go from here?
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