Gennaro Gattuso became the 10th coach to leave Valencia in the last nine years on Monday night when he parted company with the Peter Lim-owned club.

The Italian had lost three of his last four league games and leaves by mutual consent having taken charge of just 22 matches, six fewer than Gary Neville, who Lim dismissed in 2016.

Lim, who took over Valencia in October 2014, has put club delegate Salvador Gonzalez ‘Voro’ in charge for Thursday’s league meeting with Real Madrid. It will be his sixth stint as caretaker in the Lim era.

Valencia have only won one of their last 10 games in La Liga and were knocked out of the Spanish Cup last week. There were high hopes at the start of the season when Gattuso appeared to have brought an attacking brand of football to Mestalla.

But this has been the impossible job in Spain for some time now and he was worn down by injuries, poor results and a perceived lack of support from the ownership.

Gattuso, whose 22 games included seven wins, five draws and 10 defeats, met with club president Layhoon Chan on Monday afternoon following Valencia’s 1-0 defeat against Valladolid on Sunday.

Technical director Miguel Angel Corona was also present and Gattuso is understood to have repeated appeals for Valencia to recruit before the transfer window shuts this week.

It was made clear to him that there would be no movement in the market and so the 45-year-old agreed with the club officials that it would be best if he stood down.

When Valencia were knocked out of the Copa del Rey last week the players had to wait for two hours for a crowd of angry fans to disperse from the stadium gates and allow them to drive away.

At the weekend Gattuso pushed away a cameraman filming his exchanges with Valencia fans who had met the team at the airport after their latest defeat.

‘It would be easy to walk away but I believe in these players,’ Gattuso had said after that loss, but the situation was unsustainable and he leaves the team hovering just a point above the dropzone with calls for the owner to sell the club only likely to intensify.