Sunday 14 February 2016 12:42, UK
David Moyes says Gary Neville can expect to keep facing scrutiny in La Liga as expectations at Valencia are "through the roof".
Neville led Valencia to their first league win in 10 games since taking charge in December as they beat Espanyol 2-1 at the Mestalla on Saturday night.
The former Manchester United defender had been under heavy scrutiny heading into the fixture due to their poor league run and an 8-1 aggregate loss to Barcelona in the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey.
However, former United and Everton boss Moyes, who spent a year in La Liga in charge of Real Sociedad, told Goals on Sunday of the difficulties facing Neville purely because of the weight of expectation at the club.
"He will be glad to get that first win out of the way, but I can tell you, anybody who has been to Valencia, their expectations are through the roof," Moyes said.
"Of all the clubs in Spain, they are the one club who think they should be challenging Real Madrid and Barcelona. It is very difficult to touch those two teams.
"They had a good team last year, they qualified for the Champions League, they played good stuff, they have got a really demanding crowd.
"After the game when we played them, the first thing in the press conference was, 'Do you think Valencia can compete and get above Barcelona and Real Madrid?' and I felt like saying, 'You have no chance of that happening', because the two teams are too powerful and too strong.
"I have spoken to Phil [Neville] a couple of times and I know how hard it is, winning games in Spain. There isn't a lot of goals in Spain at times. Teams defend very tightly.
"I watched the second half of the game last night and Espanyol missed a great chance to make it 2-2 but Gary probably needs that little bit of good fortune you need in management to get one or two results and get started."
After the game, Neville announced that Pako Ayesteran, Rafael Benitez's former assistant coach at Valencia and Liverpool, is to join his coaching staff, and Moyes thinks bringing in another experienced body will be key.
He added: "I think Gary is doing everything he can to make sure he has got the right backroom staff. He's got enough Spanish people around him and people who understand the club itself.
"I think that is really important. It was like myself; I only took Billy McKinlay with me and we brought in the staff from the B-team and the people around, people who were connected to the club because we didn't want to go there with a British entourage to say, 'This is what we do'.
"And I'm sure Gary, with his brother there, will make sure they get the right people around them, so it'll help Gary."
Moyes was sacked as Sociedad manager in November last year having won just two of his 11 La Liga games this season after guiding the team to a 12th-place finish last term.
Much has been made of potential problems with the language barrier facing Neville, but Moyes said that was never an issue he encountered in Spain.
He said: "The whole team spoke English. Bar one or two, everybody spoke English.
"I did Spanish twice a week and it was great, I really enjoyed learning Spanish. I would hope to have been fluent in two or three years, but do I understand it. Could we go out and understand people in restaurants? All the time.
"It was never a problem in the training, and if it was, we had an interpreter there if there were things that had to get put over. Gary at Valencia will be fine, but the other thing is you don't always have time to go to a class to do a Spanish lesson.
"Your main job is to win and I'm sure Gary is finding that as well - his main job is to win games, get the coaching right, get the team right, make sure your video work and all the stuff is correct and then, at the end of the day, to fit in a Spanish class is not that easy."
