Valencia’s fans were completely bloody sick of this. They’d been whistling for a while but mostly there had been quiet, frustrated resignation. Out on the pitch, things were getting worse though, the anger slowly rising inside them, and with four minutes to go until half-time against Rayo Vallecano they broke into song. A few of them at first, then more of Mestalla. “Hasta los huevos!,” they sang, “Estamos hasta los huevos!.” It means: we’ve had it up to here, “here” being their balls, and it wasn’t really surprising. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, but the suspicion clawed at them: maybe this is the way it is. And they weren’t going to accept it. Nor was their manager.

Luis Suárez hat-trick helps Barcelona to beat Athletic Bilbao 6-0 Read more

They had chanted “Nuno, go now!” and Nuno had gone but results hadn’t changed, almost as if the manager was not the problem after all. Not the only problem, anyway. A 1-1 draw with Barcelona, overseen by the match day delegate Salvador González “Voro”, caretaker coach again seven years and seven presidents after his first stint, was noisy and fun but it was no new dawn. Gary Neville watched that from the stands; four days later, he took charge against Lyon, losing 2-0 in a result that sent them out of the Champions League. And four days after that they went to Eibar and drew 1-1. Six weeks on, they’re still waiting.

Valencia have won three times under Neville: 2-0 against the Seguna División B side Barakaldo and 4-0 and 3-0 against Granada, all in the Copa del Rey; this week they face Las Palmas with a good chance of making it to the semi-final. But in the league it is different and the sensations are not good. Coming into this weekend they had played five under the new manager: against Eibar, Getafe, Villarreal, Real Madrid and Real Sociedad. They had earned a 2-2 draw with Madrid that could even have been better but for a last minute one-on-one wasted by Álvaro Negredo, yet they were still without a victory and had slipped 16 points behind Villarreal, who were in the final Champions League place.

At the end of last weekend’s games, AS handed out their normal awards: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Messi got gold, Zidane got frankincense and Griezmann got myrrh, which is just what he always wanted. Gary Neville got the prize no one wants, coal: “the Englishman doesn’t seem to be the solution for Valencia; he has only picked up three of 15 points,” the text ran. They needed a win, and fast.

On Sunday morning, surely, they would get one. Their opponents were Rayo Vallecano: 19th in the table, 43 goals conceded, unable to win in eight league games, a team with just one away victory all season, seven defeats in nine on the road. The team whose entire squad cost €100,000 to buy, and that was reserve goalkeeper Juan Carlos. Mind you, he was playing because Yoel was victim of one of those cowardly crapping-yourself clauses: on loan from Valencia, where he was fourth choice, he wasn’t allowed to appear. Javi Guerra was out too: Rayo’s top scorer with just under half of all the goals his side had scored all season.

Yet here they were, a few minutes before half-time and Rayo were leading 1-0. Not just leading, in fact: dominating. Jozabed Sánchez had scored the opening goal on 15 minutes, guiding a neat side-footed volley into the corner, by which time they had already hit the bar, the former Celtic and Valencia striker Miku missing from five yards. Rayo passed the ball; Valencia just passed. The home side had offered just a single shot on target, and it was so bad it hardly counted. In the stands, the murmurs started; down on the bench, muttering darkly, Neville summed it up succinctly. “Fuck off,” cameras caught him saying. Well, quite.

Afterwards Neville described the first half as “unacceptable”. It was, he said, “incredibly disappointing”. “Football is an experience to enjoy, an expression … and we did not play with any joy at all,” he said. When the team went off at the break, the whistles began again. On came Valencia’s marching band, who played a whole lot better than the team. Off they went again, and things did not really get any better. But then, just as the fans began another chant – “you don’t deserve to wear the shirt,” this time – it happened.

Miku had already missed another chance, the ball slipping just wide. Now the Valencia keeper Mathew Ryan made a triple save. Suddenly, the ball was up in the air, dropping near the halfway line, where Negredo turned and hit it over Juan Carlos and into the net from 50 yards. Fifty-five minutes had gone and Valencia were in this. Alive at last, now they came forward, only for Rayo to take the lead again 14 minutes later, Diego Llorente guiding in a neat shot off a short corner routine. Neville had already sent on Pablo Piatti and Paco Alcácer; next he sent on Zakaria Bakkali. And in the 88th minute Alcácer, who had already had a brilliantly taken goal wrongly ruled out for offside, got the equaliser. Bakkali made it.

This was the third home game in a row that Valencia had come from behind to draw 2-2. “Sometimes you see a team and you think there is no spirit or fight, but we fought back,” Neville insisted. “I’d be worried if there was no response, but there was, so that is comforting. Trust me, if a team comes back from behind consistently, that’s an important characteristic. Against Eibar, we were 1-0 down and down to 10 men and it finished 1-1; against Getafe, we were 1-0 and 2-1 down and we got a point; against Real Madrid, there were six minutes left [when Valencia equalised]; today, it was the 87th minute. What is leadership? It’s fighting when things are difficult. I know ‘leadership’ is a buzzword, but I saw a response, and you need that after playing the way we played in the first half.”

The problem lies in that final line: that they needed to respond. Not just here, but against Eibar, Getafe and Madrid too. There was no escaping the reality and nor was Neville trying to escape it: four points from a possible 18, no wins in six league games, twice as far from the Champions League places as they are from relegation. Nor was it just about stats; this was also about sensations – about a performance that the manager said he would analyse and seek to understand and that the fans could not. “I can’t say a word about the whistles after that first half,” he admitted, “no one liked what they saw.”

In truth, while there was a reaction, while Valencia might just about have had the chances to earn a draw, “playing like that” wasn’t only in the first half. Both of Valencia’s goals started with Ryan and travelled much the same fortuitous path: long hoof from their own area, dreadful mistake, goal. Even the Alcácer goal that was ruled out began the same way. “Neither had much to do with football,” said Marca; the former Valencia goalkeeper Santiago Canizares likened the goals to “a glass of water in the desert”, describing the display as “tremendously poor”. The headline in AS ran: “A good Rayo, and two bolts from the blue.”

“Rayo’s manager won’t be happy,” Neville admitted, which was a roundabout way of saying nor was he, and he was right. The visitors had deserved more. “Had Valencia actually won it, I would have hung myself in the dressing room,” the Rayo coach Paco Jémez said when he was reminded that this time the referee had helped his team. “You’d have found me dangling from my tie.” Even a draw hurt; yet again, mistakes had cost his team. “One day opponents won’t find our ribs so easily,” Jémez said. “There are days when you feel sad because you have given football nothing. And there are other days when you think football is shit. The only team that did anything to deserve to win this game was Rayo.”

While Sunday’s El País column that dismissed Neville as useless because he is English was so weak as to be best ignored, there is concern for Neville. Criticism, too. He is convincing, intelligent and analytical, direct and honest in press conferences, but communicating with his squad is different, more difficult. As an Englishman in a country where British managers have – perhaps not entirely unjustifiably – been seen as limited, he may yet prove quite an easy target too. Meanwhile, as an inexperienced manager, he knows that his friendship with the club’s owner Peter Lim is also likely to be held against him if things go wrong.

Most recognise that Valencia’s problems are not of Neville’s making and there is a certain degree of patience with him; there have been some positive signs, if fleeting ones. Sunday’s chanting was not aimed at the manager and there have been no calls for him to “go now” and nor have whistles or boos been aimed directly at his decisions. Alcácer insisted that Neville is “not an excuse” – that it is up to the players. The message has changed from when Nuno was there.

There has been admiration for Neville’s approach, the serious professionalism of the work at the Paterna Training Centre, as well as an awareness of the task he faces. “His inheritance is a heavy burden,” Superdeporte wrote. That inheritance includes a squad struggling for fitness and players who are not as bad as they look but probably not as good as many think. And the arrival this week of Suso García Pitarch – the sporting director who famously brought Rafa Benítez a lamp when he asked for a sofa – actually strengthens Neville’s position rather than weakening it and is part of a process by which the club continues to distance itself from Jorge Mendes.

But, naturally, the pressure builds. AS turned up at Neville’s door again this week, coal bucket in hand. “He still hasn’t found the solution,” ran the text, which looked rather familiar. “Six weeks and 10 games later, they are still chasing shadows,” Superdeporte sighed. “They look more lost than ever” wrote Marca, “they’re going downhill and the worst thing is that they may not have hit rock bottom yet.”

“We cannot go on like this,” Alcácer said, and Neville agreed.

Talking points

Ronaldo and Benzema lead Real Madrid to 5-1 win over Sporting Gijón Read more

• “Perfection exists,” cheered the cover of AS. “So happy,” said Marca. Real Madrid were 3-0 up after 11 minutes against Sporting Gijón, with a goal for each of the BBC. For the first half at least, this was the best they have played all season and the atmosphere has changed entirely. Emotionally, life could hardly be any better. There will be more difficult tests ahead, games that mean much more than these last two have, and – besides – Zidane’s Madrid may have got 10 in two games but Benítez’s Madrid got 10 in one game. But there’s no doubt that this is not the same any more. Put bluntly, the players actually like their manager now and that does change things. “There’s more empathy,” Ronaldo admitted. “Maybe we understand him more,” Isco said.

• Anything you can do, and all that … Madrid took six minutes to get their first goal so Barcelona took six minutes to get their first. A penalty and a red card (for the goalkeeper Gorka Iraizoz) three minutes in ended the clash with Athletic Bilbao before it had even begun. Three minutes later, with the replacement keeper Iago Herrerín in place, Messi gave them the lead from the spot (although there was still only one additional minute played at the end of the first half). And so it began. It finished 6-0, with Luis Suárez getting a hat-trick to take him to 18 league goals, two above Benzema, Ronaldo and Neymar. Speaking of Neymar, it was often hard to work out what he had just done but what he had just done was outrageous. He was brilliant, with his assist for Rakitic particularly bonkers.

• This was the first time that all six of them had scored on the same weekend: Messi, Ronaldo, Bale, Neymar, Suárez, Benzema. Madrid and Barcelona have an aggregate goal difference of +73 and the two clubs have scored over 100 goals between them … but neither of them are top. Atlético are. (Although Barcelona have a game in hand.) Over the last 10 games they have scored 15 league goals, to Barcelona’s 30 and Madrid’s 33 goals. But while the other two have picked up 24 and 19 points respectively, Atlético have picked up 25. This weekend they beat Las Palmas 3-0. After the game, Jonathan Viera was asked a question that began: “Atlético get a lot without doing much …” “It might not look like a lot from the outside,” he replied, saying a lot about a lot, “but on the inside it is. O the inside, it’s bloody hard.”

• Nolito watched from the stands as his (former?) club Celta beat Levante 4-3. John Guidetti got two and Iago Aspas and Fabián Orellana starred again. Yes, that Aspas.

• Not many watched from the stands as Getafe won again. Which is a pity as this was great: four goals, five efforts hitting posts, 31 shots, and a wonderful touch for Pedro León’s equaliser as the home side came from behind to beat Espanyol 3-1. Getafe are unbeaten in six league games.

• “I’m not saying we should be violent, but we can’t commit our first fouls in the 24 minute” – Sporting coach Abelardo.

Results Sevilla 2-1 Málaga, Celta 4-3 Levante, Villarreal 0-0 Betis, Real Sociedad 1-1 Deportivo, Valencia 2-2 Rayo Vallecano, Real Madrid 5-1 Sporting, Las Palmas 0-3 Atlético Madrid, Getafe 3-1 Espanyol, Barcelona 6-0 Athletic

Tonight Eibar v Granada