Neville: Valencia had lead in legs
Gary Neville felt Valencia looked like they had already played another game on Wednesday after they were defeated 2-0 by Lyon at Mestalla.
Gary Neville has voiced his frustration with Valencia's 2-0 defeat against Lyon on Wednesday as they crashed out of the Champions League in the former Manchester United defender's first game in charge.
The La Liga side came close to opening the scoring early on via Shkodran Mustafi, but the Germany international hit the post and had a goal disallowed before they eventually fell behind when Maxwel Cornet curled a strike in the top corner, with Alexandre Lacazette putting the match to bed after the interval.
"I think we had lead in our legs, as if we had played another game today," Neville said at a news conference.
"We were the better side in the first half, but in the second we conceded a lot of counter-attacks and conceded the second goal. Lyon have good attacking players but we should have done much better.
"They were better than us and there’s no excuse. We can’t be happy with how we played and we can’t blame anyone.
"We have a fight in front of us, an objective. We have some games left before the Christmas break and I hope we can get some injured players back. Today we simply weren’t good enough."
Valencia finished third in Group H following Wednesday's results with six points from as many games, thus qualifying for the Europa League.
Get FourFourTwo Newsletter
The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.
‘Arteta, Alonso, Emery, me… none of us were physical players – we needed the understanding of the game. That probably helped us move into management’: Premier League boss reveals reasons for natural career progression
‘England have the players to win the World Cup – it’ll be tough for Thomas Tuchel to do a bad job, with the squad he has at his disposal’ Former Three Lions winger backs new boss after gentle qualifying draw