Every morning at 8am, four men with toolboxes set off for work, potter about a bit, and toddle off home again. They slope off for coffee at ten, cigarettes at twelve and a long lunch at two. When they get back to work, there's just time to have a break for coffee and cigarettes before wrapping up for the day, job done. Mostly, they sit about scratching, reading the paper and playing cards, keeping an ear open in case anyone drops by – when they try to look busy. A bit of sweeping here, some "arranging" there, before returning to what they were doing. Nothing in particular.

It could be any workplace anywhere, but this time their boss knows all about their antics. In fact, it's his idea. It is a cunning ruse, the embodiment of Valencia's modus operandi over the last year: pretend everything's OK, perfectly normal, and in a funny sort of way it will be. Ignore it and it really will go away. A poll in the Valencian paper Super Deporte this morning asks fans to rate the year. The options are "good", "very good" and "excellent". It's quite a turnaround. Twelve months ago, they would have expected to choose between "bad", "very bad" and "after you with the noose". Better still, there's a chance they'll be able to carry on regardless next year too.

For over a year now, the four workers have "worked" on the second greatest white elephant in Spanish football after Dmytro Chygrynskiy: Valencia's €320m (£278m), 75,000-seater new Mestalla stadium. Alongside, a spattering of new bars opened with imaginative names like "Stadium Bar". But, four workmen apart, there's no one to drink there, or in the "New Mestalla" or the "The Corner Flag". They're still drinking at Manolo's with its ropey sausages and football memorabilia – and its prime location. Right outside the old Mestalla. Where Valencia still play.

Valencia's new stadium should have opened by now; instead, it's a 12-storey, 89,000 square metre building site. With no building going on. Work began in August 2007; with Valencia €547m in debt, owing more than €50m to construction companies Bertolín and FCC, it stopped again over a year ago. The only people who turn up now are the four workmen and they only pretend. Their job is to make sure Valencia don't get punished for abandonment of a building site. After all, they can hardly afford a massive fine on top of everything else.

Nou Mestalla was a symbol of Valencia's failure, the millstone that was going to drag them under. Useless former president Juan Soler had lumbered the club with a colossal debt and two stadiums – one they couldn't sell and one they couldn't afford to build. When Vicente Soriano took over, he said he had a buyer, an investor and cash but he didn't. His investor, a company called Delporte, took their logo from a colouring-in book and didn't pay for their shares.

Valencia would have to sell all their players. They were heading for the Second Division B. Or out of business.

They didn't. In fact, the symbol of their failure became the symbol splashed on the back of their shirts. And although that might have been pretty bloody cheeky, and the stadium remains unsold, Valencia are still standing. David Villa, David Silva and Juan Mata are still there, and far from ending up in the eight-team, four-group Second Division B they now find themselves in very different league: the Champions League after defeating Espanyol 2-0 on Saturday night with two from Nikola Zigic, virtually securing third place, their best position in four years. With three games left, they have a six-point lead over Mallorca and an eight-point lead over Sevilla, plus better head-to-head goal difference. A solitary point in three matches – against Xérez, Tenerife and Villarreal – will guarantee them a return to the Champions League. With the money it brings, it may even guarantee their future.

The question is how did they do it? The answer is those workers. And a little help from friends in very high places. Sometimes even a rubbish hand can be a winning hand if you know how to ride it out – and when it comes to poker faces and playing hardball, few beat Valencia president Manolo Llorente.

When he took over in the summer, invited in by the club's creditors, Bancaja – which is owed over €200m by Valencia and had obliged the club to let it on to the board – Llorente decided that the worst thing Valencia could do was bang on about being doomed and fret over the stadium: it would only bring fatalism upon them and prices tumbling. Few things excite other clubs and weaken your hand like a fire sale, so he pretended there wasn't a fire at all. Besides, he reasoned, what's the point of selling a €40m footballer to cover a €547m debt? You might as well fix the Titanic with a puncture repair kit. So, he cancelled the sales of Villa, Silva and Mata, insisting that he would only accept a "scandalously scandalous" offer, quietly downscaled stadium plans, refused to be rushed back into constructing it, handed the job of silently selling Mestalla to an Englishman called Richard Ellis, and, with sleight of hand and a tug on the heart, kept the club's creditors and its other "owners" at bay.

First came the share issue, with €92m worth of shares new shares created. 3,981 fans were persuaded to buy shares at €720 each share, raising €18.7m. Essentially they bought a blank piece of paper, a certificate of how much they loved Valencia with no real, tangible value. But it had a huge symbolic value, the perfect leverage for a spot of emotional blackmail – enough to allow Llorente to show the Valencian government, the Generalitat, the strength of support and lay bare the risk implicit in allowing Valencia to go to the wall. Bancaja, owned by the Generalitat, was persuaded not to call in its debt and the Valencia Fundación, also a governmental concern, stumped up the remaining €73.3m to complete the share issue.

Suddenly, Soriano and Delporte's shares were diluted to irrelevance, reduced to just 4.6%. Llorente and the Generalitat were in control. All Valencia had to do was raise €44m a season in cuts, sales or income to cover their annual deficit. The €547m could wait until the stadium was sold; work at the new stadium could too. The fundamental problem remains but the desperation had dissipated; psychologically, this is a different club now. The assumption has been that next summer Valencia will sell – this week, there have been reports of Villa joining Barcelona and, unlike last year, he'd be prepared to move abroad too – but Valencia believe they can withstand bids for him and Silva. Unless they are scandalously scandalous. With the Champions League money, they might be able to stay on budget with a solitary, and smaller, sale, such as Mata.

Llorente's gamble has, in the short term at least, paid off. He has also changed the terms of the debate. This hasn't been an easy season. Unai Emery has clashed with Joaquín Sánchez, Miguel Brito, Banega and Chori Domínguez and may not continue as coach, the cup exits stung, and many think Valencia have been too conservative and worryingly weak against the bigger sides. Valladolid, Almería, Osasuna, Athletic and Espanyol account for more than half their points, while they were beaten in Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla and Mallorca, and lie 24 points off second place. Some think they should have achieved more with the players they've got. The point, though, is that they have those players at all, and may even have them next season too. Last summer, that was unthinkable. Now at least the complaints are all about the football. No one cares about the empty stadium on the other side of town any more. Except the four men whose job it is to pretend they do.

Talking points

• Speaking of Mallorca, they beat Athletic in Bilbao to keep hold of the final Champions League place after Sevilla had – inevitably – beaten Atlético 3-1 in Seville. It seems that not only do the media, the players and the fans think that Atléti no longer care about the league, so do the refs. As the phrase goes, it's seemed very easy to give penalties against Atléti yesterday. After all, the ref probably reasoned, they don't mind …

• It's getting very tight at the bottom. (Yes, yes, you can insert your own cheap gag here). Tenerife's victory was not enough to get them out of the bottom three but only four points separate them in 18th from Osasuna in 12th. In total, nine teams are separated by nine points but the bottom three hasn't changed. Not yet, anyway. Osasuna, Almería, Sporting, Zaragoza, Racing, and Málaga could all conceivably be dragged into relegation places. Time is running out but Valladolid and Xérez, who got a 90th-minute winner in an offside position, could still get out of it. Just. Sporting and Almería in particular have collapsed. So have Racing, who sold their soul the day they sold Sergio Canales. They have won just two in 16.

• This week's spat was in Valladolid, where Getafe coach Míchel and Valladolid coach Javier Clemente aren't talking to each other and refused to shake hands. Their rivalry goes all the way back to when Clemente was the Spain manager and was reckoned to have brought a premature end to Míchel's playing career but this particular problem comes from an article Míchel wrote for Marca a while back in which he described Clemente as an ex-coach, a man who still clings to his only ever success – over 25 years ago. "Clemente," Míchel wrote, "is still on the gabarra [the barge the Athletic players and staff took down the river to celebrate the title in 1984]".

Results Tenerife 2-1 Racing, Malaga 1-1 Sporting, Valladolid 0-0 Getafe, Xérez 2-1 Almería, Deportivo 0-1 Zaragoza, Espanyol 0-2 Valencia, Villarreal 1-4 Barcelona, Sevilla 3-1 Atlético, Madrid 3-2 Osasuna, Athletic 1-3 Mallorca.

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