COMMENT: There'll be 55,000 at the Mestalla on Saturday. A sell-out. Barcelona are in town. But they're not the headline act. It's the new coach who Valencia fans want to see.
Gary Neville won't take his place in the home dugout. He's left the Barca game to caretaker coach Voro and his brother, Phil Neville. But he will be paraded on the pitch before kickoff.
The early reaction to the former Manchester United captain's appointment has been overwhelmingly positive - both locally and abroad. The skeptics have been drowned out by a tidal wave of positivity from fans, ex-players and local pundits.
But this is Valencia CF. Title winners. Champions League finalists. One of the great names in football. Neville talks a good game. Indeed, a great game. But Valencia is too big for this. Their status deserves more than an "experiment", as Santiago Canizares puts it today, or a roll of the dice.
Neville arrives in Valencia on a wave of great emotion - almost blind faith. However, at yesterday's media presentation, he confessed he couldn't speak a word of Spanish. Indeed, tribalfootball.com can reveal his first words to his new squad were all in English.
Upon flying in from Manchester, Neville immediately visited the training centre and had the squad assemble.
"Hi, I'm Gary Neville," he began, "and I am very happy to be here. Congratulations on the victory yesterday (in the Copa) and we will soon begin to work."
All in English, of course. But that's the least of the doubts now rumbling away over this appointment.
How will Neville set up his Valencia? No-one can say. He's been assistant coach to Roy Hodgson for almost four years - and that's been it. He's never led a team himself. He's never built a pattern of play and employed it. He's talked about it, sure. But even then, at yesterday's media conference, words failed him.
Not once, but TWICE, local reporters asked him about his system and style of play - and he couldn't answer it. Neville even conceded some surprise over the questions.
But for now, the cynics will be ignored. Neville's appointment is being celebrated by Los Che fans, weary of the management of his predecessor, Nuno. The clashes with Alvaro Negredo. The coach's relationship with the owner. And the club's connections with super agent, Jorge Mendes. They all contributed to Nuno's downfall. After all, VCF are only five points out of the top four.
Apparently, Neville represents a clean slate.
But like Nuno before him, Neville is also close to Peter Lim, Valencia's owner, and has known the club's chairperson, Chan Lay Hoon, for some time. One of the many complaints leveled at Nuno this season was that he and Lim were too close. But unlike the Portuguese, Neville and Lim run a club together - Salford City. You can't get closer than that.
And as for Mendes, it's still only December. Yes, Neville isn't a client of the super agent, but if VCF are active during next month's transfer window, Mendes will be involved. He has to be. No matter the protests from Chan this week, Mendes will always have an influence on Valencia with so many of his clients on their books.
Actually, Neville was asked about his January plans yesterday and branded it 'disgusting' when 'managers talk about players who are not theirs'. If Neville is in this lark for the long-term, you fancy those claims coming back to bite him.
As a marketing ploy, this is the stuff of genius from Lim. With Neville now the front man, the United supporter has guaranteed worldwide coverage of his Valencia. And yesterday, it couldn't have worked out better. As Florentino Perez and Real Madrid were scrambling to rescue the club's credibility over the Copa del Rey fiasco, Valencia were being celebrated home and abroad for this imaginative appointment. If Lim wanted to make VCF relevant again - he could not have come up with a better move.
But that's off the pitch. it doesn't matter how many Twitter followers their new coach has. Or how well he can articulate the 4-1-3-2 system. It's about what happens on the ground that will decide if the 'experiment' has been a success.
Can he master Spanish? Can he develop a playing style? Does he know how to sign and bed down new players? No-one, not Neville's biggest doubters nor nearest friends, can honestly give us an answer.
It will be fascinating to see how Neville copes over the coming months. But for a club the status of Valencia, they should be beyond being a 'fascination'.
INJURY TIME
Gary Neville isn't the first English coach to take charge of Valencia. Though the last one was over 80 years ago.
Neville becomes the fourth Englishman to coach VCF, though without harping on it, the previous three all took the job with a decent track record behind them.
Jack Greenwell, who moved from Barcelona to Valencia for season 1933-34, lasted 12 months, taking the club to the final of the Spanish Cup, which they lost to Real Madrid.
Greenwell had replaced another Englishman, Rodolfo Galloway, who had coached Valencia for the previous two seasons after arriving from Sporting Gijon.
The first Englishman to take charge of Valencia was James Herriot, who spent two years - 1927-29 - with the club, leading them to the Spanish Cup semifinals for the first time.
Like Neville, Herriot could not speak a word of Spanish when he first arrived, but recovered to enjoy that long Cup run in his first season.
