3 reasons why Valencia is struggling in La Liga under manager Gary Neville

Once a mighty force in Spanish football, Valencia is stuttering under new manager Gary Neville. Sitting in 12th place without a win in the new manager's eight La Liga fixtures, Valencia looks like a team in trouble.

A 1-0 loss to Sporting Gijon on Sunday spelled the club's first home defeat since November of 2014. For Neville, life as a manager could not have started any poorer.

Here are three reasons why Los Che might be struggling under Neville:

Inexperience all around

When Neville was given the Valencia job, he left not a managerial position, but a media-related one; Neville was a pundit at Sky Sports. Apart from a short-lived assistant's gig with the England national team, Neville has no experience as a manager.

Not to mention he doesn't speak Spanish, which certainly isn't making life any easier for him or his players.

Neville entered a Valencia team already in the midst of an identity crisis. Like him, his team is an inexperienced bunch: only nine players in the squad are over the age of 25. Conversely, 20 players are 23 years old or younger.

Valencia is a develop-and-sell club by nature, and as such, the club's coaching turnover has been rapid. The club has had 15 managers in the last 14 years. Neville's inexperience is showing.

It was inevitable, really, since he got the job due to one factor ...

Neville's connection with Peter Lim

If Neville had taken charge of a Premier League outfit, perhaps the leap would have been a little more understandable. So how did Neville end up in Spain? He's got a few connections.

His younger brother Phil Neville was already an assistant coach at the club. But, more importantly, Gary is friends with Valencia's owner, Peter Lim. The two are joint owners of Salford City, after all.

"Given the situation, first I picked Gary not because he is a good friend; Gary is a good coach, who happened to be a friend," Lim told the club's official website. "He is top pundit in the U.K. I chose him because of his knowledge of football and everything that is around football."

A top pundit, indeed. If that sounds a little ridiculous, imagine what the players were thinking.

This is a job Neville had no business taking. Sure, he was once the captain of Manchester United, but Neville the "manager" didn't get the job on merit. The players know this, and they might not respect him for it.

The players are struggling as well

One of Neville's biggest changes was taking the captain's armband from Dani Parejo and giving it to Alvaro Negredo. That decision came at an awful time, though, as Negredo is in torrid form.

This horrendous miss cost Valencia against Gijon, and it's just one of many spurned chances in recent weeks. Negredo is sputtering, and his backup, Paco Alcacer, isn't playing with enough consistency to warrant a starting role.

Under Neville, Valencia seems to be creating good attacking opportunities regularly enough. But the lack of finishing, whether through form alone or otherwise, has hampered Los Che in league play.

During his time as a pundit, it was pretty clear Neville has an acute understanding of tactics and shape. But his inexperience and inability to communicate might just be too much to overcome.

Something club legend Rafa Benitez could rectify, perhaps?

Had Real Madrid hired Zinedine Zidane roughly a month earlier than it did, one has to wonder if Neville would be at the Mestalla at all, and if Valencia would be in this predicament.