Gary Neville may not have been able to fit his giant Sky Pad in his carry-on but he’s brought plenty of miniature versions to Spain.
The new Valencia manager has handed out iPads to all of his players as he attempts to express his footballing philosophy in spite of his lack of Spanish.
Neville took to the Sky Pad like a duck to water, using it to turn Monday Night Football into an analytical masterclass, and now his new players can learn about his desired tactics with the iPads that, according to reports, were bought out of his own money.
Neville’s assistant Miguel Angel Angulo revealed that, despite only being in Valencia for a fortnight, the Manchester United legend is communicating well with the team.
“He has given an iPad to each player to help them follow training and different actions during games,” said Angulo.
“He is doing better than I expected. I thought the language barrier would be more of a problem. Gary has already started to speak a little Spanish and he is improving quickly. There is a good understanding with the players asking him or me what is wanted.
“It won’t take long before we can demonstrate the style of football that we want.”
Neville is winless in his two games with the Mestalla outfit but Angulo believes that this is merely a settling-in process and that Neville can kick on now, with a very winnable game against Barakaldo in the Copa del Rey up next.
“What he [Gary] is looking for is that the players understand as quickly as possible what he wants and the games against Lyon and Eibar were really games of adaption,” said Angulo.
“Barakaldo may be a good rival for us to work on ideas that we want to transmit. Then we play Getafe also at home where we can continue that.
“We are not looking for long-term goals to be honest. We are looking at short-term targets. We now play Barakaldo, who we need to beat, then Getafe, Villarreal and Real Madrid.”
If the whole iPad experiment fails, at least they’ll still be able to enjoy a spot of Angry Birds.
