Around 200 fans were waiting for Valencia at Manises airport and at the club’s Paterna training ground when they returned from their Copa del Rey semi-final first leg against Barcelona on Wednesday night – and it was not to welcome their heroes home. Instead, there were chants, protests and abuse aimed at the club and the players. For the first time, some pointed the finger of blame at their manager Gary Neville. Three times he had been asked if he would resign; three times he said no.

A few minutes before, the club’s sporting director, Suso García Pitarch, was asked if he could guarantee that Neville would continue as manager, only to evade the question. “It is not the time,” he said. “We will discuss things internally.” Valencia do not wish to sack him and there are few obvious alternatives, not least with La Liga rules preventing a manager – Rafa Benítez, say – taking charge of two clubs in a single season. Valencia want to see how the team react at Real Betis.

“Let’s be clear, on Sunday we have to deliver,” Neville said. He knows. In truth, it is not the 7-0 defeat to a brilliant Barcelona side that matters most – losing to Sporting Gijón last weekend was probably worse, so too the failure to win in eight league games – but it is damaging and the impact has been huge.

The following morning Valencia’s squad were back again, training behind closed doors, hidden from angry fans. Thursday was supposed to be a day off but those plans were cancelled after they conceded seven for the first time in over 20 years. It was described by Pitarch as “one of the worst results in our history”. Neville arrived tired: the night before he said he would not sleep well. It had been one of the “most painful” moments of his career.

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Neville described it as “unacceptable”. That was one word for it. On the front of the local newspaper Super Deporte, they gave Valencia’s owner, Peter Lim, the chance to select his own headline. He could choose from five adjectives: ruinous, shameful, indignant, unacceptable and insulting. They had gone for: “A Historic Humiliation.” It was not just that Valencia had been beaten 7-0, it was that it could have been twice as many. “The best Barcelona, the worst Valencia,” El País declared.

The Copa del Rey was supposed to be Valencia’s competition, a little joy in an increasingly difficult campaign, a diversion from the difficulties in the league. Valencia are currently just five points off the relegation zone having gone 11 league games without a victory, eight of them under Neville, but they had reached the semi-final of the cup, knocking out Second Division B side Barakaldo, Granada and Las Palmas. The run was always likely to end against Barcelona, just not like this. The second leg will be irrelevant. On the pitch, at least. Off it, it may well be a plebiscite.

Last weekend, when Valencia were defeated 1-0 by relegation-threatened Sporting Gijón, they had been unlucky, sure, but it was the first time that they had lost a home game in the league since 2014. Far from getting better, things were getting worse. Neville’s managerial career began with a Champions league exit, he has not won a league game in eight and now they face a cup exit too. When he arrived, the fear was not making a Champions League place. Now it is being dragged into a relegation battle.

After that Sporting defeat a local journalist asked Neville a question that began with the suggestion that the fans were turning against him and that so too were “some in here”. Journalists, in other words. Neville described the question as “ridiculous”, at least when it came to supporters. “Don’t put this on the fans, please,” he said, making the point that when Mestalla turns against you, you know about it. No one had yet chanted “Neville, vete ya!” (Neville, go now!).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The front covers of Spanish sport newspapers Marca, left, and Super Deporte. Photograph: Marca; Super Deporte

He was right. There had been chants for his predecessor, Nuno, to leave but recent frustrations had been aimed at the players and the board. There was a recognition that Neville was not to blame for a crisis that runs right through a club that faces divisions, where hidden and not so hidden interests are played out and where doubts are raised about the direction taken and the real aims of the owners. All this in an environment of politics and pressure, where enemies circle and errors are seized upon. “We’re sick of this,” Valencia’s fans had chanted during the Rayo Vallecano game. Sick of this, not sick of him.

That balance was precarious, though. As a friend of the owner, an inexperienced manager with little apparent connection to Valencia or Spanish football, in defeat some of the doubts about the institution were always likely to be projected on to him. Much the same had happened to Nuno. Mostly they had not been, but on Wednesday night something shifted. Neville might not be the problem, and certainly not the only one, but some wondered if he was the solution. Neville inherited a tired, imbalanced squad, lacking leadership and full of players who are not as good as their price tags suggested or as they seemed to think. This was never going to be easy, but it was not expected to be this hard.

In Super Deporte Julián Montoro wrote: “Neville accepted a huge challenge and when he arrived he found a barren terrain, a poorly constructed and poorly prepared team, no technical secretary to help him and no one to talk to about football. He has improved the preparation, he has worked to recover the players one by one, but then come the games and there are too many shadows …”

Others have been less understanding. Neville has been diligent and professional, well received by the players, and honest in his appraisals, but there is no escaping that the results have been poor and the performances largely unimpressive. He knows that.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gary Neville, left, and his brother Phil, watch on as Valencia slump to a 7-0 defeat at Camp Nou. Photograph: Bagu Blanco/BPI/Rex/Shutterstock

“He does not seem to have changed the system and results are worse,” the former captain David Albelda said. In fact, he has changed the system but he is yet to find one that entirely convinces him. Against Barcelona he fielded four full-backs and one striker, leaving Álvaro Negredo and Paco Alcácer out, deciding to sit deep and wait for Barcelona. “Absurd,” was the judgment in one Valencia paper. It did not work, Valencia were startlingly passive.

“Wanted: a manager and a sense of shame,” wrote Conrado Valle in the sports daily AS. “Ring Singapore if you have to,” he pleaded of the sporting director, “but look for a manager now. One who is the finished article … Gary Neville is not responsible for all of Valencia’s ills. There are too many things wrong to blame it on the last man in. But Lim’s project needs to start from scratch now and he cannot continue with his apprenticeship at Valencia.” In Marca, Diego Picó claimed: “The numbers leave Neville exposed. If they do not change, things could get even worse.” The former Valencia goalkeeper Santi Cañizares, now a TV pundit, said that he expected Neville to resign and admitted that he was disappointed that Pitarch claimed to believe in his manager.

After the Barcelona loss, Neville’s response was direct. Asked three times if he was planning to resign or if he would understand if he was sacked, he replied: “no”, “next question, please”, and “I’ve already been very clear”. But if he was unequivocal, the same could not be said of Pitarch, who squirmed and evaded questions about Neville’s future. “I have spoken to [the president] Layhoon Chan,” he admitted.

It is not a simple decision; it may not even be Pitarch’s decision. He has only been in his role for a fortnight and his ascendancy over his manager is doubtful. Neville arrived before him, appointed not by Pitarch but by the owner himself, with whom he is a business partner. There is patience for now, no real desire to take a drastic decision, but it is only natural for that patience to have worn a little thinner. And there is pressure now too; the agenda shifted.

“Now is not the time to talk about that,” Pitarch said when pushed on whether Neville would continue at Valencia. But on Wednesday night, for the first time, that is exactly what they were talking about.