Team Focus: Valencia

The final whistle was met by boos and waving of the white handkerchiefs at the Mestalla on Sunday as Valencia squandered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 with Mallorca. This sort of crowd discontent is usually the sign of a club in crisis and spells trouble for the manager, but at Valencia it is pretty much par for the course. The team were also jeered off after the 4-2 win over PSV in the Europa League in midweek for having the temerity to concede two late away goals.

The crowd's gripe is at a 10-match run since Christmas in which Los Che have picked up just two victories and 11 points. However, the problem for Unai Emery appears to be a problem of expectation and what is realistic. For the past three years Valencia have been on an island in La Liga finishing third for the last two seasons but 28 and 25 points behind champions Barcelona and 25 and 21 behind Real Madrid in second.

In this regard their run since the turn of the year will see them fall ever further behind. At the beginning of January Valencia were seven points behind the leaders and they are now already 26 off the pace. However, their realistic ambition was surely never the title and their advantage over their rivals to their challengers in the race to be the third force of Spanish football has remained relatively stable. In 2009/10 they finished eight points ahead of Sevilla, last year nine ahead of Villarreal and even after this poor 10-game stretch their advantage over the team in fourth place is greater - although admittedly big-spending Malaga pose a more sustainable threat than Levante.



Moreover, one of the major contributory factors to this indifferent run of results has been their success in cup competitions - another standard-bearer for a successful season. Since the first week in January Valencia's players have played every midweek in either the Copa del Rey, Europa League or with their national team. Their Copa campaign was ended only by Barcelona in the semi-finals and they are still well-placed to progress to the quarter-finals of the Europa League in Holland on Thursday.

Valencia's problem in league games over the past two and a half months have been the most common in any form of football, difficulties in both boxes.

For the first 16 league games Emery's men conceded only 16 goals. The bedrock of that defensive solidity was the partnership in central defence of Adil Rami and Victor Ruiz. Both played 13 of those 16 games at an average WhoScored rating of 7.0 and 6.9 respectively and in the 10 games they played together Valencia were even tighter at the back, conceding only eight goals (five of those in two games against Barcelona and Real Madrid).

However, since the winter break that partnership has been broken up through a mixture of injury and suspension, Ruiz has only played in five of the last 10 games at an average of 6.2, whilst Rami's form has also dipped to an average of 6.7 as they have conceded 15 goals in that time.

At the other end of the field Valencia's success was built on the goals of Roberto Soldado. The former Real Madrid striker may have grabbed his chance with the national team two weeks ago with a hat-trick, but at club level he has been off colour. Soldado scored 11 league goals before Christmas at an average of one every 108 minutes, but has since scored just one in his last 783 minutes of league football.

Emery admitted recently that motivating his players for league games had become a problem with their position in the table so static and although the abuse from the home crowd is likely to continue thanks to a relationship that has never been exactly cordial, this will surely be another season in which expectations are met. Should they crash out of Europe in this round or the next Emery will, even with his famed rotation policy, be able to utilise his stars energy more effectively on the domestic front to seal third place and if they don't there is the possibility of a European trophy.

Maybe then the man from Gipuzkoa will get the credit his managerial feats deserve.