They serenaded him in Cádiz and Catalonia, but it wasn’t what he wanted. They sang about how they loved him, tens of thousands of them, but it wasn’t their love he was looking for, and when he departed to applause he didn’t clap back; instead, he looked at the floor, trying to shut them out. Love? They’re having a laugh. They were, anyway; this time, it was real at last. On Saturday night in Valencia Denis Cheryshev departed to a standing ovation and, unlike the Carranza and the Camp Nou, Mestalla meant it: an ovation offered for all the right reasons. Deserved, too. It was hard not to be happy for him.

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For a player who’s started just three matches – one of which floats in some kind of weird limbo, a game that never took place even though it did – a lot has happened to Cheryshev this season. Without meaning to, he helped sink Rafa Benítez, even though it wasn’t really either of their faults; now he has helped save Gary Neville, heading in the goal that secured a 2-1 victory over Espanyol, Valencia’s first win in 12 league games, their first in nine under the Englishman. Neville’s Mark Robins, Jamie Carragher called him, prompting the man who is still the Valencia coach to reply: “Carragher always was a troublemaker.”



Persuaded to stay at Real Madrid against his initial inclination, Cheryshev started one game for them and scored too, in the Copa del Rey at Second Division B side Cádiz – only to find out later that he shouldn’t even have been on the pitch. A suspension held over from last season when on loan at Villarreal had the Cádiz fans in stitches, like they ever need an excuse for a giggle and a sing-song, and Madrid in trouble: no second leg and no second chances. Cádiz were awarded a 3-0 win and a place in the next round. Madrid were out.



Soon, so was Cheryshev. The winter window opened and, as he was not playing at the Bernabéu, he wanted to go back to Villarreal, where he had impressed so much last season. Madrid refused because they blamed Villarreal for everything that had happened. So then he wanted to go back to Sevilla, where he had been the year before and where his dad Dimitri – the former winger who, like Denis, made his international debut against the USA – is on the coaching staff. But they didn’t manage to free up a squad place in time. And so he ended up on deadline day at Valencia, where his first game, 48 hours later, was a cup semi-final at the Camp Nou. The man who had “knocked out” Madrid had the chance to knock out Barcelona too.



Instead, he was knocked out of the same competition for a second time, a crisis seemingly engulfing his new club; when he returned with his team-mates that night, fans were waiting for them, hurling abuse. It finished 7-0 and Neville called it one of the “most painful” nights of his career; it can’t have been much better for Cheryshev, with the Camp Nou, rarely so animated, borrowing from Cádiz’s song-sheet to mockingly thank their accidental hero, slayer of Madrid: “Cheryshev, we love you!” It was happening again, another reminder. When he came on with half an hour to go, the cheer was bigger than any of those that had greeted the goals. He was handed a huge ovation by Barcelona’s fans. Valencia’s fans, by contrast, protested.



The last time they had gone ​​13 games without victory they suffered the only relegation in their history

Some in Spain criticised Neville for even playing him, declaring him insensitive and suggesting that he might sink his new signing. But Cheryshev was not going to hide. The kid who arrived in Spain aged five, joining the youth system at Sporting Gijón and then Burgos, where his father played, before heading to Madrid, admits: “When I was a kid I had doubts”. Bright, articulate, engaging, focused, these days he shows little sign of them. After the game, the TV rights holders asked for one of Valencia’s club captains to do the pitchside interview. They refused; so he did it. Just about the only player to have offered anything on the pitch, providing an assist for a Rodrigo goal that was disallowed, he played with dignity and spoke with it too. “It doesn’t worry me,” he said.



There were more important things to worry about. A virtual cup exit and a very real league crisis. “I would have sacked Neville already,” snapped former president Paco Roig this weekend. “I wear a watch but I wouldn’t become a watchmaker; he has played but he’ll never be a manager.” The current president is a different matter; the sporting director started looking for a replacement, but there was no desire from the owner Peter Lim or from Layhoon Chan to sack Neville. Yet the pressure had built. How could it not?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Phil and Gary Neville watch on during Valencia’s match against Espanyol. Photograph: Manuel Queimadelos Alonso/Getty Images

This weekend the fans supported their team, the silence of Wednesday night’s semi-final second leg and the protests of the days before left behind. A campaign built, “Valencia always rises again” its slogan. “We need them,” said Neville, who has carefully, cleverly managed his message to the fans since arriving at Mestalla. Outside the ground, they welcomed the bus, cheering the players in. A banner implored them to do it “for the badge”. Another translated “You’ll never walk alone.” Yet the peace was naturally precarious.

Fail to win and it would equal their worst ever run in the league – and the last time they had gone 13 games without victory they had suffered the only relegation in their history. After that hammering at the Camp Nou, another defeat had followed against Betis, and more protests had followed too. Now they absolutely had to win. Their opponent was Espanyol; the only team with a league record as bad as Valencia’s in the time Neville had been in Spain, and one whose manager Constantin Galca had been rescued by his players – they intervened to prevent the club sacking him. This was huge, a relegation clash, even if Neville refused to recognise it as such. Valencia are 22 points worse off than they were at this stage last season.

Espanyol had lost eight in a row but took the lead with an Oscar Duarte header after 52 minutes. It was the tenth time in 10 league games under Neville that Valencia had found themselves 1-0 down, and the surprise was that it was only one. Diego Alves, back after nine months, was at fault then but saved his team again. An astonishing early save led to an even more astonishing miss from Mamadou Sylla, heading wide from a metre. Others followed and were almost as bad; chances for Espanyol to make it 2-0 and, at 1-1, to go back in the lead; even chances to equalise at 2-1 down.



Álvaro Negredo had come on and equalised, his deflected shot squirming in on 70 minutes, and the game had become wild, frantic. Neville described it as “like a basketball match”; no control, no organisation, not much quality, but back and forth it went, Mestalla roaring them on. Marca’s headline ran a single word: “defibrillator.” Over on the touchline, Neville leapt up and down, at one point furiously spitting something that rhymes with “ducking punt”. Afterwards he described his players as being led by “passion and emotion”.



Six minutes after Negredo scored, Cheryshev headed in the second. “Don’t wait for the right moment; it doesn’t exist,” he tweeted recently, but it does and this was it. Mestalla erupted, the noise greater than it has been all season. Taken off, Cheryshev was received a standing ovation – a real one this time – and when the final whistle went five minutes after that Espanyol’s players collapsed to the floor, unable to believe what had happened. It was cruel on them, leaving them just one point off the relegation zone and Galca, as one headline put it, heading “from intensive care to the morgue”. Barcelona fans loved Cheryshev even more: he’d knocked Madrid out of the cup, now he might just have helped knock Espanyol out of the division.



More importantly, this time the right people loved him too. His goal was huge. “Mestalla and Cheryshev carry Valencia to victory,” one headline said. As Espanyol’s players hit the turf, Valencia’s players embraced. Neville turned and headed straight down the tunnel. “Relief is the word,” he said. “You saw the reaction.”



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Neville admitted that Valencia had been fortunate, noting: “This shows that football is not about putting in the best performance; we didn’t play well but we got the result.” He also admitted that the critics had been “right” when they had attacked him and his team: “I would have been saying the same.” The luck Valencia lacked against Sporting Gijón, they had had here: a deflected goal, chances missed by the opposition, a win without playing at all well. Defensively, they had been dreadful again and there had been little organisation. There was, though, character. Communion too. “We’re with the manager to the death,” Cheryshev said. And they had got there, somehow.



“This is absolutely not a night for celebration,” Neville said, but it was. Valencia had won at last, for the first time since November, the first time at home since October, and this could prove a turning point. “We needed a result like this,” Negredo said; pessimism had started to take hold. Now, perhaps, the mindset will change. “I hope,” Neville added, “this will give us confidence.”



There are other, more tangible reasons for optimism too: available for the first time this season, Diego Alves not only gives Valencia a superb goalkeeper but the leadership they have been sorely lacking. The return to fitness of Paco Alcácer, while not decisive on Saturday, is important too. Negredo, wasteful against Sporting and Betis, has now scored two in two; Cheryshev gives them a dynamism they didn’t really have and Neville said he expects him to get better still, “after all he hasn’t played much”. And the relationship between fans and players was mended, even if that’s only because they want the same thing.



There was something else too. After the game, Neville announced that Pako Ayestarán is joining his coaching staff. The next day, a key figure at Valencia insisted that Neville’s future had “never” been in doubt, insisting that he had impressed everyone with his “diligence” and “professionalism”, and that even when things were going wrong no one had pointed the finger at him, “not even the fans”. But, this person admitted, Neville did need help, especially when it came to communication and his environment: “Gary is a great coach but if you can’t fully express your ideas to your players it’s hard.”



Not that Ayestarán is just a translator, far from it: astute, ambitious, analytical, some former players see him as the real reason for Rafa Benítez’s success at Valencia and at Liverpool. Current players are keen too: “We’re delighted he is joining us,” Negredo said. Ayestarán knows Valencia and Spanish football and it is laudable that Neville had the humility and honesty to recognise limitations and accept help; this was not a decision imposed upon him, although what it means in the long term remains to be seen.

In the short term, it may be one that makes a big difference. All the more so allied a Valencia victory at last; it is just one game, and not a very good one at that, but things look a little different now. Relegation is seven points away, for a start.

“This will give us a lift for sure,” Cheryshev said. “Things in football change quickly. One day you’re down, the next you’re up.”

Talking points

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lionel Messi and Luis Suárez are about to produce one of the most famous penalties of all time Photograph: Quique Garcia/EPA

• So what exactly do you say about Barcelona? “They make you fall in love,” ran the cover of El Mundo Deportivo. “The complete show,” said Sport. “A joy,” said Marca. “Messi directs a work of art,” said AS. Which is something, but still probably not enough. For quite a long time, Barcelona actually lived a little dangerously against a Celta side that was impressive, and looked like they might not win. But the opening two goals were superb, the first a 30-yard free kick from Lionel Messi (that should probably have been a 35-yard free kick), and the second a brilliant move between he and Luis Suárez that ended with the Uruguayan sticking the ball in the top corner on the bounce. And then ... then, the last 15 minutes were absolutely outrageous. Genuinely, barely believable.

It finished 6-1, with a hat-trick for Suárez – he’s now on 39 goals in 34 games this season – and one each for Messi, Neymar and Irvan Rakitic. But that doesn’t even begin to tell the story. Not properly, anyway. Santi Giménez described Messi as the conductor of an orchestra who sometimes leads a jazz band instead, improvising its way through games, inventing things you never imagined: Wilhem Furtwangler one moment, Thelonius monk the next (no, this column neither).

All six goals were fantastic, even though one of them, the fourth, was a penalty. Only it wasn’t, not really. In fact, strictly speaking, it probably goes down as a penalty miss from Leo Messi, another to add to the stats, albeit one that should carry a bloody great big asterix next to it. This was a penalty miss and an assist rolled into one. Messi ran up but instead of shooting, he did a variation on the Cruyff-Olsen penalty, 34 years later. You know, the one that Thierry Henry and Robert Pires couldn’t do. Messi laid it off and Suárez ran in (from just inside the D) to score. Speaking of Cruyff, he delivered good news this weekend in his fight against cancer: “I feel like I am winning 2-0 at half time,” he said.

The penalty will be remembered for ever, replayed constantly. Not that Luis Enrique was calling it historic – “historic will be if we win trophies,” he said. There was something about the look on Suárez’s face as they celebrated that suggested that this might not have been pre-planned. He looked a little shocked, grinning wildly. As it turned out, it was something that had been planned ... just not with him. “It was meant for me,” Neymar admitted, “but ‘fatty’ was closer to it.” He wasn’t annoyed. “Our friendship is more important. We love each other.” Everyone else loved them too.

• Well, not quite everyone. The best portrait of the way things are here, of just how rotten it is, may be the fact that, never mind Celta’s players and manager saying that they had no problem with it, the penalty became yet another controversy to shout about on the mass debate shows, with the usual suspects occupying the usual trenches with painful predictability – the exact opposite trenches they would have occupied if it had been them who had done it and not them.

• Dani Alves was angry when he got taken off, he admitted. A problem with the manager? “No,” he said. “I was angry with myself because I had a shit game.”



• “Ronaldo was ...” Zinedine Zidane started, struggling for words “... I don’t know if I can say this, but ... de puta madre. Sorry for the words.” De puta madre roughly means “bloody brilliant”, and he had been too. “It’s up to you lot to have your opinions, to say if he is good, bad, finished ... we saw that he’s fine,” Zidane added. What he was, more than anything else, was a bit more like the old Ronaldo, seen only very briefly over the last 18 months or so. Rather than the no.9 he had evolved into, against Athletic Bilbao he was back out on the left wing, running at people, cutting inside to shoot. “That’s what we wanted: he’s very good on the wing,” Zidane said. “And the first goal was exactly that.” Two goals took Ronaldo to 21 and top of the Pichichi chart, until Luis Suárez passed him again the following night.

• That’s three wins in a row now for Real Sociedad.



• Takashi Inui got a hat-trick ... of posts. But that didn’t stop the sirens that greet every goal wailing at Ipurua. Borja Bastón scored his 16th goal of the season to set Eibar on their way to a 2-0 win that put them back in sixth, occupying the last European place ahead of Athletic and Celta. Better still, it pretty much ended any fear of a second-half-of-the-season collapse like last year, when just two wins in 19 games saw them go down (only to be reinstated when Elche suffered an administrative relegation). They had lost three in a row, but victory over Levante means that they now have 36 points. That’s one more than they got in the whole of last season. “It’s very unlikely that weird things happen now,” coach José Luis Mendilíbar said.



• “It’s sad to have to say this, but we have to say that we’re happy that the other teams down the bottom didn’t win either,” said Levante manager Rubí. Rayo and Sporting drew a fun game in the rain on Friday, Espanyol were beaten by Valencia, Betis drew 2-2 with Deportivo, Granada lost 3-0 to la Real, and Las Palmas were beaten 2-0 by Sevilla, who have now won 11 in a row at the Pizjuán.



• Speaking of 11 in a row: that’s how long it is since Villarreal lost.



• Depor do like a draw: 14 of 24 have ended level.



• According to Spain’s premier soccer statistician Alexis Tamargo, it took Fernando Torres 2,713 minutes to go from 99 goals to 100 goal with Atlético Madrid and just two minutes to go from 100 to 101. Neatly, the clock on the scoreboard – up alongside the advert for the DIY store, the soft drink company, the car showroom and the brothel – showed 1.01 when he got his 101st to opening the scoring against Getafe at the Coliseum. There were 8,512 people there to see the game and in truth those that didn’t go didn’t miss much. Except frostbit on their feet. Atlético controlled the first half, only to lose control in the second, but even then Getafe rarely looked like scoring. It finished 1-0, keeping Atlético second.

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

