One of the most biggest disappointment of the 2016-17 season is Valencia,the once known club which was a fixture in Spanish and European football currently this season is only 17th which is one place above Sporting Gijon and there is a possibility that the club might be relegated to the Segunda Division next year if this kind of situation continues.How bad it is for Valencia?In the 16 matchdays of the current season the club from Mestalla has collected only 13 points which a point more than Sporting Gijon and in it winless in the last 8 matches with the last victory against its nearest competitor for survival in the La Liga which is again Sporting Gijon.That match which was played in mid-October where Valencia triumphed 1-2 with the goals scored by Mario Suarez provided the last victory to date and from that point for the Bats things went downhill.How bad this season has become is that they have already changed three coaches,first in the beginning of the season Pako Ayestran was booted from the bench due to a bad start of the season which saw the the Bats worst start of the season with four consecutive defeats which included an embarrasing defeat against Eibar,after Ayestran was fired,former Fiorentina and Italian national team coach Cesare Prandelli was brought to the bench and was the sixth coach hired in 18 months,but he only lasted for only two months since he resigned from the bench before the new year since the board refused give him any transfer money which Prandelli planned to spend on new players which the club desperately needed.Prandelli pointed in an interview for the Gazzetta dello Sport at the unbalanced squad as one of the main problems of the club and the need for at least for a new striker,two midfielders and full back,but Lim refused to spend any money.That period saw the worst of Valencia’s nightmare season where the club after its last victory against Sporting Gijon has only collected three points through three draws with Deportivo La Coruna (1-1),Granada (1-1,another club which is Valencia’s relegation competitor) and Malaga (2-2) which sits at the 13th of the La Liga table.The situation from the club from Mestalla started much earlier,the club has serious financial problems and in recent years they had to sell their best players like Jordi Alba,Juan Mata,Roberto Soldado,David Silva,Jeremy Mathieu,David Villa and Nicolas Otamendi just to pay the debts while construction on the new stadium the Nou Mestalla have been halted since 2009 again for financial reasons.Meanwhile in 2014 Singaporean businessman Peter Lim bought the club,however Lim’s ownership of the club has been very poor.The club relied mostly on loans and bargain buys but this time the Bats have ran out of luck and last season they managed to finish only 12th with 44 points which is very far from places which guarantee European competitions and very negative end of the campaign which saw them from the last five matches of the last season collect only 4 points out of possible 15 which included 3 consecutive defeats in the last 3 matches and negative results continued into the new season.Currently the board with Lim has no vision for the club and how to bring it back among Spain’s best and besides a dreadful transfer policy it has a bad policy in hiring coaches.The current caretaker coach is Salvador Gonzalez Voro who placed as defender in the club between 1983 and 1994,but he is a multiple time caretaker coach of the club when real coaches are expressly fired from the bench.When Prandelli resigned with him the sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch resigned besides that it was the middle of the transfer window,but Pitarch had enough of politics of the board which ignored pleas of help,it will be seen how the new sporting director Jose Ramon Alexanko will deal with the situation who worked with the club’s youth academy in recent years.But the club is currently in a state of disarray and it is far from the early 2000s era when they won two La Liga titles in 2002 and 2004,made two UEFA Champions League final appearances which both lost in 2000 and 2001 while they won the UEFA Cup in 2004 where they triumphed in the final against Olympique Marseille,while their last trophy came in 2008 when they won seventh Copa del Rey which is the club’s last trophy to date.As the season continues the question is will Valencia survive the relegation battle and avoid relegation in the Segunda Division or it will be relegated for the first time since 1986 when they were last time from the La Liga,it remains to be seen but the situation for now is alarming.
Kristian's Football Blog 