Valencia hurtle towards relegation as another protest engulfs the Mestalla | Sid Lowe

Most of Valencia’s fans didn’t see the goal that momentarily pulled them clear of the relegation zone but they did see the goals that pushed them back in again. They were at Mestalla on Saturday night but not in Mestalla when Samu Castillejo’s 16th-minute shot put them one up against Athletic Club. Instead, they were still outside, desperate to escape the abyss. Beyond the wall, Castillejo’s first goal since September came to a backdrop of empty seats and packed streets, yellow everywhere, but at least offered brief hope of a first win in three months; when those fans finally headed in, it was taken away again, a 2-1 defeat deepening their desperation.

With Valencia winless since the World Cup, their 15th coach in nine years on the verge of replacement two games into his eighth stint in charge and relations between supporters and owners broken, the crisis deeper than just defeats, a protest had been called. Valencia faced Athletic on Saturday and more than 50 supporters’ groups and thousands of fans had agreed not to go into the ground until minute 19, the year of the club’s foundation. One local paper claimed survival was on the line, on and off the pitch, and so they gathered on Avenida Suecia with banners and balloons, the street jammed all the way along the main facade of the stadium, a sea of people demanding the departure of Peter Lim.

There have been other protests, from art, to mariachi bands following directors, marches and endless hankie waves, that classic symbol of disapproval, but this was the image the club most wanted to avoid – president Layhoon Chan had admitted that last time supporters had left the team playing before empty seats it had hurt and this time security guards tried to stop pictures being taken from the balcony overlooking the street – which is why they did it.

Yellow cards everywhere declared “Lim, go home.” There were ‘For Sale’ signs. A banner spelled it out in a list of languages: Sell. Others declared the club “our passion, your business” and declared themselves “against Mendes’s Mafia”. There were calls to action from local politicians. A couple of others were darker, threatening even. Protest songs pleaded with the owners to leave. “Peter, go now!” they sang, over and over. The whistles had ears smoking along with the flares. When the PA announcer inside shouted “Come on, fans!” before kick off the volume rose but not the way he planned, the response coming from outside.

Valencia fans protest against Peter Lim. Photograph: José Miguel Fernández/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

“It was strange,” Athletic coach Ernesto Valverde said. He was right: this was a surreal experience. In here, the game; out there, the people. At one point, the brass band began to play, soon overwhelmed from the sound of the street. Some supporters argued that the team needed their support but if there were maybe 7,ooo or 8,000 inside at kick off, there could have been three times that on Avenida Suecia. By the time Castillejo gave Valencia the lead there might have been 10,000 in Mestalla yet many more celebrated outside, a tiny delay in cheering a goal they wanted so badly but had not witnessed.

When Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim took over in 2014, there was relief. Celebration, even. Valencia had two stadiums – one they couldn’t build and another they couldn’t sell – and millions of euros of debt. They had had bad owners and worse owners; by then they had a bank owner, calling in debt. One former president tried to kidnap another. The best players left, one after another: David Villa, David Silva, Juan Mata, Jordi Alba, Roberto Soldado and the rest. Statistically the world’s best team in 2004, twice league champions, Uefa Cup winners, twice Champions league finalists, Valencia should be a huge club – they are a huge club – but they were in crisis.

This was their way out, so it goes. Set up by the then president Amadeo Salvo and agent Jorge Mendes, Lim paid €22m and loaned a further €72m for a 70% share which has since gone beyond 80% with his total outlay now above €200m. But at worse, fans wonder about his motivation; at best, they think he doesn’t care. The money is real and others before failed, but Lim hasn’t been at Mestalla in almost five years. The breakdown is complete, the hostility not hidden, the damage done. Relegation, a real possibility, might make it irreversible.

One front page from 2014 shows Lim with a headline calling him scary: Valencia were going to be big again, opponents would should be frightened Instead, it is their own supporters who are.

When Castillejo scored on Saturday night, it lifted Valencia from the relegation zone where they had started that morning following Cádiz’s win on Friday, but it didn’t last. By the time fans left again, they had seen Nico Williams and Oihan Sancet score twice and Unai Simón save Athletic to condemn them to a 2-1 defeat, the “green shoots” their coach had grabbed at gone.

This is the first time that Valencia have been in a relegation position this late in a season since 1987 – the only time they have gone down. Out of the Copa del Rey, they have not won in La Liga since November and have collected just one of 21 points. Four consecutive defeats makes this the second worst run in their history.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the summer, Valencia brought in Gennaro Gattuso as coach. If some of their managerial appointments have been almost absurdly bad choices, and while some of the good ones ended up being dragged down into mistrust, broken promises and paralysis, Gattuso needn’t necessarily have been one of them. The club needed to sell – Gonçalo Guedes, Carlos Soler and Maxi Gómez were among nine players leaving – but Edison Cavani came with seven others. And there was something about Gattuso that felt good for them, energy and optimism after the tension with José Bordalás and the gloom of Javi Gracia’s time.

Full of lines to make people laugh and an approach to the game to make them enjoy it, he came to lift the pressure. He said that Toni Lato was the perfect boyfriend for his 18-year-old daughter and insisted that “signings are not something to worry about; being told you have weeks to live is something to worry about.”

Nico Williams of Athletic Club celebrates the equaliser at Valencia on Saturday. Photograph: Aitor Alcalde Colomer/Getty Images

There was. he said, “no fear”, a message he repeated to a talented but young team. When he arrived he declared he was a lion, not a pussy cat. “In two, three months we’ll have a coffee and you’ll see,” he vowed.

Valencia had lost 1-0 to Athletic, 1-0 to Atlético and 2-1 at Rayo but eight weeks in, Valencia were in a European place, just three points from the Champions League. They had scored five against Getafe, three at Celta, two against Espanyol, Osasuna and Elche. They could play, and fans took to him. But he began to witness vulnerability too – “you can’t just go down to the super market and buy €20 of Gattuso Experience”, he said – and an 86th-minute goal cost them a win at Sevilla, an 83rd-minute goal saw them lose to Mallorca, and Robert Lewandowski’s 93rd-minute strike beat them at Barcelona. That was followed by a 1-1 at Real Sociedad and a 3-0 win over Betis.

Valencia didn’t win again, elimination in the cup bringing a furious response from fans and the risk of relegation becoming more real. On first-half scores, Valencia would be seventh; instead they are 18th and that is inescapable. Gattuso went to Singapore to see Lim – “my wife doesn’t like it, but I have to go”, he said – and decided to walk away, a familiar emergency replacement taking over. There have been 15 coaches in nine years and six are Salvador González Marco, ‘Voro’, always there to help for a bit before returning to his job as match-day delegate. Thing is, you can’t help wondering at what point he says “I love Valencia but this is can’t go on,” whether his service really helps any more. This time even their Winston Wolf hasn’t solved anything.

In fact, by the time you read this, that figure might be 16. Despite being publicly told he had until the end of the season, Voro has overseen three consecutive defeats, admitting that Valencia could be the worst team in primera, which they really shouldn’t be, and, much like Gattuso, sounding like a man who can see and fears where this might be going.

On Monday the club’s technical secretary and corporate director landed in Singapore to discuss another replacement and perhaps the protests that went around the ground and the globe, that glimmer of hope only heard by most fans. “I am called Salvador [saviour] but it doesn’t work like that,” Voro said on Saturday night after another defeat was confirmed, the abyss opening before them all.