Valencia 2-2 Rayo Vallecano: La Liga – as it happened

90+4 min: One final chance for Rayo to punt the ball into Valencia’s area, after Manucho is brought down by Santos. Ah, no dice, well claimed by Ryan. But that’s it, there’s no time for a Valencia counter-attack!

90+2 min: Rayo doing well to quell Valencia’s momentum, winning free-kicks to slow down the game. Neville is a picture of frustration.

90 min: Valencia pushing for the winner now: Bakkali again tries his luck against Quini but the winger is forced inside. Andre Gomes is the next to surge forward and he plays a neat one-two with Rodrigo but Gomes’s shot is expertly blocked by Ze Castro, who throws himself in front of the ball. Four minutes added on.

86 min: Valencia have the ball in the net, but Alcacer’s strike is ruled offside! Replays show that the Spanish striker timed his run to perfection but the linesman put his flag up! Ooooo, Alcacer is fuming, and he berates the referee but gets nothing more than a yellow card.

85 min: Rayo counter-attack, and rather than hold the ball up, and kill the clock, Manucho does his best Negredo impression and tries to lob Ryan from 50 yards. The ball trickles out for a throw-in.

84 min: Jozabed, who is arguably Rayo’s best creative player (and who has been looking a little leggy of late) comes off for Raúl Baena. Rayo are shutting up shop, 10 men behind the ball.

83 min: Peter Lim, just to let you know, there are alternatives …

81 min: Increasingly desperate stuff, this. Barragan, Valencia’s right back, comes off for Bakkali, the Belgian winger. This should have been a home banker for Neville. Instead his team are fighting for a draw in front of their whistling fans.

78 min: Yellow card for Quini, who chops down Piatti when the substitute might have broken clear. Good foul to give away. A minute later Bangoura is booked for hauling Cancelo to the ground.

77 min: This will suit Rayo just fine. The game has become bitty, and fragmented. Manucho is proving to be a fine target man, and Santos in particular is struggling to get to grips with the 6ft2in striker.

74 min: Bangoura nips in on a loose ball, and for a moment it looks as though he might get one-on-one with Ryan, but Mustafi shows his experience and shepherds the ball out of play, away from danger.

71 min: Every poor pass or heavy touch from Valencia is now being jeered by their fans. Otherwise it is silent in the stadium, save for about 100 Rayo fans jumping up and down in delight in the winter sunshine.

67 min: Rayo respond with a change of their own: Manucho, once of Manchester United and Hull City, comes on for Miku, who has looked good in link-up play and had plenty of opportunities but failed to make anything of them.

65 min: Neville takes Negredo off! Seems a strange decision after his goal and the way he has troubled Rayo’s defenders this second half. Alcacer is on.

62 min: Rayo are trying to steady the ship, they have finally got their foot on the ball after a whirlwind 10 minutes. Negredo fouls Tito.

60 min: An hour gone, and Neville makes his first change: Piatti on for Santi Mina. The 20-year-old has had an awful day, he has lost the ball 87,037 times and not beaten his marker once.

58 min: How things change. One goal out of nothing and suddenly, it’s all Valencia! They surge forward on the counterattack, Rodrigo carrying the ball forward on the right. He has Negredo loitering at the back post but instead tries a shot, well saved by Juan Carlos, and luckily for Rayo, the ball breaks to one of their players. If that had fell to Parejo or Santi Mina instead, they surely would have tapped the rebound into an empty net.

54 min: Valencia are clinging on! Miku is sent clean through but Ryan rushes out to deny him. Pablo Hernandez picks up the rebound, skips past Barragan and tries to force his shot into the open goal but Ryan again is able to scramble and save.

52 min: What a miss from Miku! Rayo should definitely have extended their lead! Hernandez gets half a yard on Barragan and cuts the ball back from the byline. It’s behind Jozabed but Cancelo mis-controls the ball, which falls to Miku, but the striker can only fire his effort a yard wide of the left-hand post. He has his hands in his head as he looks apologetically towards the Rayo bench.

48 min: Parejo wins a good knock down and for a moment, Negredo looks as though he’s going to be able to get a shot on goal inside Rayo’s area, but the ball runs too wide and then Negredo trips over his own feet and boots the ball out for a Rayo throw-in. Maybe Neville’s decision to rest arguably Valencia’s best striker, Paco Alcacer, was a poor one.

46 min: There definitely seems to be more urgency in the way that Valencia are pressing the ball. I think I just saw Negredo grit his teeth. Woof!

Peeeeeep! Here we go again. Neville, who didn’t leave his seat in the dugout during the first half, is now patrolling his technical area.

Neville has previously admitted that he finds half-time team talks the hardest part of the job, as he needs to get his ideas across, in English, in a short space of time. He was a picture of calm during that first half, as his team cantered around the pitch in a daze. If he’s not breaking some crockery inside that dressing room, I will be surprised.

45 min+2: Rodrigo whips a dangerous low cross into the box from Valencia’s left but Tito does well to turn the ball behind, when he might have easily have sliced the ball into his own net.

45 min: Bangoura has a chance! He latches onto a clever ball up the line and uses his searing pace to get away from Cancelo, but lashes his effort well over bar. State.

We’ll have three minutes added on here at the end of this first half.

44 min: Andre Gomes has had a woeful half in the middle of midfield for Valencia. He tries a shot from 30 metres out (easily blocked) when Rodrigo was screaming for the ball on the left. The Mestalla crowd tell the Portuguese exactly what they think about that.

42 min: Bangoura cuts inside Cancelo into the area and goes down under the left-back challenge … is it a penalty?! No! And it’s a good decision, Cancelo definitely got the ball.

40 min: Valencia have had a shot! It’s only taken 40 minutes. They force a corner down the right and from Parejo’s delivery the ball breaks to Rodrigo. The one-cap Spain international shoots, but his effort is blocked by his own player, Santi Mina!

38 min: I have had no reason to type Negredo’s name so far in the opening 38 minutes. The striker, who started his career at Rayo Vallecano, has been completely anonymous so far.

36 min: Rayo are definitely the better side, they deserve their lead. Miku is being given far too much room and time on the ball, albeit with his back to goal.

34 min: Pablo Hernandez is at it again – he is fast becoming the game’s most important player –and he plays a neat one-two with Jozabed, but doesn’t have the pace to get clear of Valencia’s defence, and Barragan is able to track back and tackle the ball out for a corner.

32 min: Embarba is struggling to run off the knock from earlier. It looks like he twisted his ankle after jumping for a high ball. He’s going to have to come off. Shame, really, as he was playing well down that right-hand side. Lass Bangoura is coming on.

30 min: Pablo Hernandez finds the feet of Miku, and the striker is allowed to juggle the ball – once, twice – turn and volley fiercely towards goal, but it’s right down the throat of Ryan. A yard or two to the left or right, and Rayo may well have been 2-0 up!

27 min: It’s been a very scrappy match so far. Neither team have a pass completion rate above 60%. Urgh.

25 min: Both Embarba and Miku lie crumpled in a heap after a couple of hefty Valencia challenges, the latter in a worse state after feeling the full force of Mustafi. The German has been one of the few positives for Valencia this season. He is not scare about putting his foot in when need be, but reads the game well and is very comfortable bringing the ball out from the back.

23 min: Santi Mina has been so wasteful. He’s perhaps trying to do too much, a trick here, there but doesn’t seem to have any end product. He’s had a disappointing season so far since joining from Celta Vigo in the summer.

20 min: Llorente catches Cancelo with a very late challenge. Yellow card.

18 min: Valencia’s team are really struggling down that left. I covered Eibar v Valencia a few weeks ago and Neville’s team also struggled: that day it was Orban who was given a torrid time by Keko. Things aren’t looking a lot better today. Both Rayo wingers, Embarba and Pablo Hernandez are having their way with Cancelo and Barragan respectively.

12 min: Pablo Hernandez, once of Valencia (and Swansea), has had some neat and tidy touches on the left. He skips inside Barragan but can’t thread a pass through to Miku.

10 min: “It may be sunny here but it’s also bloody cold, emails Martin Peters. “6 degrees is relatively freezing here and woolly hats are out in force.”

8 min: Llorente, a young defender on loan from Real Madrid, is playing defensive midfield for Rayo today. He is highly rated and reads the game superbly but might struggle against Valencia’s midfield three. Parejo picks his pocket and feeds Santi Mina on the left, but Quini does well with a nice sliding tackle. He had to get that right inside his own area, and he did.

6 min: Rayo have definitely been the stronger here, Cancelo is having a torrid time of it down the right. The visitors are creating openings but failing to capitalise – they have only scored 21 goals in 20 league games this season so you can see why they finds themselves in the bottom three.

4 min: Rayo should be 1-0 up, no question! A poor kick out from Ryan in Valencia’s goal allows the visitors to build an attack down the right: Embarba is allowed far too much time to cross and Miku ghosts in between Mustafi and Santos but can only plant a header into the ground, which bounces up, hits the bar, and is eventually cleared. Miku was six yards out, he really should have hit the target.

2 min: Oooooo! First chance for Rayo! Miku, a former Valencia striker who is yet to find the net this season, wins a good flick on and Nacho, coming up from left back takes a first-time volley at the back post, but crashes his effort high and wide.

Peeeeep! And we’re off!

The teams are out! Valencia in their home white and black strip, Vallecano is a changed purple number. It’s a beautiful winter’s day, the sun is shining over the Mestalla. Let’s do this!

The appointment of Jesús García Pitarch as Valencia’s new sporting director looks to be a shrewd one: the 52-year-old – who is also currently chairman of Hércules – acted in the same capactity under Rafa Benítez back in the early 2000s heyday in which Valencia won La Liga and the Uefa Cup. Neville seems happy at Pitarch’s arrival:

It’s an appointment that the club has been considering and needed for a while. I met with him last week, I’m happy because when they ask me in press conferences about transfers I can tell them to ask him! It’s a good appointment because he can help me a lot, he knows Valencia and knows the Spanish league. We were together and we have a good working relationship. He’s introduced himself to the players. The best thing is that he’s got a great understanding of this club, it’s good to have someone who knows well what the league is.

The countdown begins … pitch is looking en pointe.