Ruben Baraja has claimed that Valencia's current side is not competitive.
Ruben Baraja believes that a lot of work needs to be done at Valencia to restore the team to its former glories and has stated that the current side is not competitive.The influential midfielder thinks that the club's disasterous form last season has left the new management team with a huge rebuilding job to make them a driving force again.
After Claudio Ranieri's ill-fated second spell in charge at the start of last term, stand-in trainer Antonio Lopez was unable to push the side into the top six.
Quique Sanchez Flores has been handed the job of rebuilding the squad and instilling confidence in the club that won the league title in 2004.
"After the extremely bad year we have just been through, we now have to construct a team," Baraja said.
"The coaching staff are all part of this and it is their job to build it.
"Things have not been going very well as the results have shown, but everyone wants to take us back up and that is not going to happen over night.
"We want to be competitive again and to be able to attack and defend well and when those things are sorted out we will once again be a team to be reckoned with."
"We have won trophies and expectations have grown and it means more pressure on the team.
"Now the pressure is such that if Valencia loses two consecutive games then it deemed a crisis."
Valencia face Hamburg in the InterToto Cup next week as they bid for a place in Europe and go into the second leg at Mestalla a goal down, but Baraja is prepared for the worst.
"The team's first target must be to qualify for the Uefa Cup," he explained. "But we will not commit suicide if that does not happen.
"We have to believe in ourselves and if make it into the Uefa Cup then that would be phenomenal, but if we do not then we will just have to improve and be ready for the league and cup."
Valencia have signed a host of new players in the summer transfer window including David Villa from Zaragoza, Patrick Kluivert from Newcastle, Mario Regueiro from Racing Santander and Edu from Arsenal.
