La Liga Preview: Valencia Look at Sevilla and See the Club They Should Be

Enzo Perez said Valencia have hit rock bottom, but the problem is they might not have. It was almost exactly 12 months ago when they thought they’d hit it; again a couple of months after that; again not long after that; again and again as the club fired manager after manager following loss after loss. Each time, it’s looked like rock bottom. Each time, it hasn’t been. 

The issue with Valencia declaring themselves at the lowest of all points now is that it projects an assumption they’re protected from the ultimate descent. On Saturday night, Valencia travel south to Andalucia to take on Sevilla at the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan. They arrive as one of the worst sides in the division, sat in 16th place and averaging less than a point per game, hanging just above the trap door. 

Through it is rock bottom. With each passing week, you feel you’d be less surprised if they went through the trap door, and it also wouldn’t surprise you if they didn’t even make it to Seville on Saturday: Somewhere along the line, Valencia set sail with a Tamagotchi for a compass. 

It would be easy at this point to jump into the drunken sailor references, but Perez put it better. When announcing his club’s arrival at rock bottom after last weekend’s 1-1 draw with Granada—a game in which Mestalla fumed and in which owner Peter Lim was turned upon—the midfielder told Marca (in Spanish) his team’s concession of goals had become “childlike.”

If there’s ever a way to gauge whether a team has allowed the destruction of its own standards, it’s by watching them defend. Protecting your goal involves skill and tactical acumen, sure, but more than anything it requires collective effort. It’s one of the few things a whole team can do together; watching a side defend is a glimpse into its soul.

Evidently, Valencia sold theirs for a couple of bucks and an Eliaquim Mangala.

Valencia have lost six league games in a row for the first time in the club’s history pic.twitter.com/byQMk87nOs

— Bleacher Report UK (@br_uk) September 11, 2016

The Frenchman will be wanting the DVD from Sunday’s clash with Granada as much as Marlon Brando’s agent once wanted the film poster for The Island of Dr. Moreau for his office wall. Mangala is the latest centre-back to send Mestalla over the edge, and the list is extensive: Aymen Abdennour, Aderlan Santos and Ruben Vezo have all had their turns before him. 

Had last weekend’s opponents been anyone other than Granada, it’s almost certain Valencia would have conceded a handful. They’ve already let in 22 this season, having started it by conceding four to Las Palmas and three to Real Betis. In the last 12 months, Los Che have had more managers than clean sheets. That’s not a typo; Mestalla will soon need seat-back pockets with sick bags in place at all times. 

Of course, though, these are symptoms of the issue rather than the cause. Valencia’s identity crisis on the field is a result of them not knowing who they are off it. This is a club with money but no idea how to use it; a club stuck between two stadiums; a club with a new regime that looks both besieged and distracted; a club at which awkward questions linger, the most important of them being: “What is the point of Valencia right now?”

Lim might have saved them from financial ruin but that’s about all, and if they’re not careful they could experience ruin like never before. The Singaporean’s reign started brightly in 2014-15, …

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