JakeCOYB
Player Valuation: £500k
I will always love Howard, he loves our club. And play the same side we did against Young Boys, they cant do no wrong in Europe.
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I will always love Howard, he loves our club. And play the same side we did against Young Boys, they cant do no wrong in Europe.
Came into this thread thinking it would put an opinion in to why he should stay, turns out its a copy and paste of all the others.
Duncan Disordely
Player Valuation: £35m
Roberto Martinez keeps the faith at Everton and eyes on Europa League prize during difficult second season
Family business: Roberto Martinez has worke dindustriously to follow in his father's footsteps
Picture: PAUL COOPER
By Henry Winter, Football Correspondent
4:36PM GMT 07 Mar 2015
Manager is building a better future at Goodison Park and sticking to his principles but knows that picking up Premier League points quickly is imperative
Roberto Martínez embarks on a passage of Europa League and Premier Leaguegames that will define Everton's season, drawing on the strong values instilled in him by his parents and keeping faith in the young talents that represent Goodison’s future.
Success in the home-and-away fixtures against Dinamo Kiev and the domestic tussles with Newcastle United and QPR are much needed in this difficult second season for Martínez at Everton. Martínez readily accepts the challenge of dealing with the pressure and the murmurs of supporter unrest.
“I was born into this,’’ the 41-year-old recalled of his early days in Balaguer, Catalonia. “My dad was a manager locally [of Club Futbol Balaguer]. I never sat on the bench with my father but a couple of times when I was very young, I was a mascot, and was around the bench. He brought that way of living with results into the home. If Dad had a good game on Saturday, we had a great week. If Dad lost the game we were all in a terrible mood. We couldn’t get anything from him. Management’s ingrained in me. But I don’t see management as pressure. It’s the way I live.”
At home, he has two televisions, one for his wife Beth to enjoy her programmes and the other to feed his obsession. “I watch football to unwind. When you’re a manager you think only about the next game, about winning, about affecting things. I still owe Beth a honeymoon. I don’t know when I’m going to do it. Since I started managing I’ve had no summers off. She has no say at the moment. I’m sure she will get her payback! It’s difficult to have a summer where you can relax.”
Sitting in his tidy, expansive corner office at Finch Farm, almost a copy of the Manchester United manager’s office at Carrington, Martínez exuded his usual upbeat, calm demeanour. The room even smelled of cologne. Yet these are difficult times at Goodison, with many fans concerned over performances and results. But he never gets down. “No. I do get disappointed but I never go into dark places. No, no. I go in front of the laptop and watch the game. I can be very bad company.
“When you are a football fan, and you lose a game, it’s awful because there’s nothing you can do until the next game. As a manager, I have the big advantage of being able to see what went wrong, the things not working, how we can change it for the next game, the partnerships we can create, and work with the players.”
Underneath the smiling demeanour, there’s a strong character. “It’s about fighting. I always wanted to be involved in football. I had to pay a big price for football which was leaving my family at the age of 16 [to join Real Zaragoza]. When you make that decision so early in your life that sets high standards.
Roberto Martínez talks to Muhammad Besic at Finch Farm (PA)
“It’s pure passion being involved in football. My parents taught me to fight for everything I wanted to achieve, to be respectful and that human values are very important. How you achieve something is as important as what you achieve. The journey has to be right.”
Those lessons in life from his parents back in Balaguer provide the key to understanding Martínez’s management style, his purist principles with a devotion to possession in pursuit of a long-term vision. “Winning a trophy at any price can be very costly in the long run,’’ he explained. “Of course you have to defend, but you want to be creative, constructive.” He will not “park the bus” to secure results to win a trophy. “I don’t think you would win it. You will always fall short.”
Yet Jose Mourinho has tailored his tactics to stifle the opposition to win silverware. “It’s different when you’ve got the best players and that’s more a specific game-plan for a specific game. I’m of a school of going to a game and enjoying a skill, a piece of talent that makes something happen, that gives you real pleasure. Winning is very, very important but you can chase that dream with good football, not just ‘finding a way’ to win.”
The walk to Martínez’s office takes the visitor from a car-park being vacated by first-team players after training, youngsters of rich promise. Without a game this weekend, Ross Barkley was given the opportunity of a morning off but he was in at Finch Farm working out. The upstairs canteen was full of the happy hubbub of Academy hopefuls. A role of honour on the wall saluted those Evertonians to have represented England, with the full debuts of Barkley and John Stones duly recorded as well as Ryan Ledson’s captaining of the Under-17s to European success last summer.
On the corridor leading to Martínez’s control-room, David Unsworth, a fans’ favourite now overseeing the Under-21s, emerges from his office with a handshake that would make a bear wince. For all the team’s current domestic travails, there are good people at the club, working to build a better future, moulding young players like Brendan Galloway, Tyias Browning and Luke Garbutt.
Hope for the future is all around at Finch Farm. Stones is 20, a full international, and Everton captain one day. “Yes,’’ nodded Martínez. “He has got the essence, the material, the responsibility. He understands what it takes for a player to be a leader by action. He’s getting integrated into the Everton culture. It’s been impressive how he’s reacted every time he’s had a game, how he became better the next time.”
John Stone sholds off Young Boys' Guillaume Horau (AFP)
Stylish on the ball, Stones can make mistakes, and was caught out by Olivier Giroud during Arsenal’s win last week. Martínez will not take him out of the firing line. “Players with that sort of character need to be in the firing line. We can always replace a player with an experienced player but it’s going to limit you. If we replace players with younger players who have incredible potential, we’re going to have a period of learning, getting experience, but the benefits at the end will be untold. We don’t want to think ‘we can only fight for fifth position’. We want to go further.
“In terms of a young centre-half with potential, John is as good as it gets. As a No10 in English football, Ross is as good as it gets. Ross knows exactly what he wants. When you love the game as he does, and get an education as he has at Everton, it’s not a surprise that we keep producing these characters. What’s impossible to produce is the talent that Ross has, that’s unique, he’s born with it.”
But Everton have helped shaped Barkley, keeping him grounded. “When you see Ross when he walks into the building, that’s where the values kick in. You’ll see our players get instilled with those values. He also gets it from what happens at home. Ross is a very family man. His mum is always an incredible influence.”
Ross Barkley powers past Chelsea's Ramires (AFP)
One of the youngest managers around, Martínez continues to enthuse about the fledglings, if a £28m Belgian World Cup player can be deemed fledgling. “When you want to assess Romelu Lukaku, you forget straight away that he’s 21. You just think about a powerful man, a goal machine at this age, a bigger goalscorer than any of Ronaldo, Messi, Agüero at this age. He’s developing massively.
“He keeps learning all the time. He’s not the finished article. He’s a player who can have an impact, who can score at any time, and also be a ‘reference’, a No9, that you build your play on, and win games around him. He's played in Europe consistently, and is growing all the time with the experience. He’s someone we would have paid a lot more for than we paid. That’s how highly we rate him.
Romelu Lukaku is harshly judged - he is still only 21 (AFP)
“These players need time. They need help on the way from everyone at the club. We are all allowed to vent our frustrations and show our emotions but we need to be realistic as well and conscious that we are working on something for the long term. These young players will take us somewhere special.’’
He seeks to inspire these players further by placing photographs of Dixie Dean, Alex Young, Brian Labone, Howard Kendall, Alan Ball, Graeme Sharp and other club legends around Finch Farm. “The Premier League can really lose that sense of what the football club represents: you get all the world to pick players from, and you want to bring quality in, and you forget about representing a football club.
Dixie Dean's statue on 'Blue Nose Day' (Action Images)
“When you put the Everton shirt on, it is good to look back, to the names that have given everything to fight for this football club. Ross Barkley knows it. Liam Osman knows it. Tony Hibbert knows it. But it doesn’t matter where you were born, once you become part of Everton, you have to get familiar with certain names that are part of our history.
“There’s a responsibility to embrace the history and who we represent and follow their work. I don’t see it as an extra pressure. It’s the opposite. We need to understand that those are the standards we need to reach. Everyone here carries that understanding of the nine League titles, winning trophies, going around Europe, and that is something that has been quiet underneath building. That is something that is ready to explode.”
He has studied the history of Everton managers. “I was very much gobsmacked when I saw I was the 14th [permanent] manager at Everton. Some clubs do 14 managers over two years. Howard Kendall is a manager I invited to Finch Farm and had long chats with him. He arrived at the club in a similar way [to Martínez] with new ideas, new concepts and he changed a lot of things. When you put big changes in, it doesn’t click into place straight away but then he won trophies and he made an incredible two or three fantastic winning teams.
“Then you’ve got Joe Royle, the last manager that has won a trophy for Everton [the 1995 FA Cup]. I made sure he could be part of our structure. The contact with Joe and Howard has been important for me to understand Everton.
Paul Rideout lifts Everton's last trophy, the FA Cup in1995 (Getty Images)
"David Moyes did a fantastic job here, and I want to keep that, maintain it.
“The values of Everton are huge: it’s the passion, the hard work, achieving things in the long run and understanding who we represent. That’s why Everton became a big force. What we represent in our community is incredible. You look at our fan-base, it’s something that comes through generations. Over the years, we’ve been a winning team, a club with trophies. We have to be a winning team. That’s why at this moment it’s become such a difficult period. We are a team that should be competing for the top things.
“We have shown the talent that the squad has. What we did really, really well in the summer, and we had to work hard as a club, and especially the chairman, was to keep everything we held last season, players on loan that we made permanent signings [like Lukaku]. We lost very influential players like Steven Pienaar and Leon Osman for long spells. Players coming back from the World Cup gave us a slow start.”
But do you over-pass? “Never! I don’t think you can. You can never over-pass. Passing for the sake of it is not going to take you anywhere. There’s a reason behind every pass.” Even if sideways or backwards? “Yes, yes.” Even if back to the keeper? “As long as there’s a reason for it.” But Goodison craves more urgency. “No, no, no, yes, no. We are a very dynamic side as well. We can adapt to different opposition or different situations.
“We’ve got in winning positions, but we haven’t mastered how to keep those leads. We are the team with the biggest number of points lost from winning positions – 17 points which changes completely where you are in the table [8th rather than 14th].” Was that concentration? Fitness? “No, no. It’s not a physical element. Opposing teams are now paying a lot of respect to us when they come into Goodison because of what we did last season [finishing 5th]. They are very conscious defensively. We’ve done it in Europe against the best teams. Look at what we’ve done against Wolfsburg. They lost only two games in 29 [four in 34 this season], both against Everton. Great performances.”
Across Stanley Park, Brendan Rodgers changed his tactics to good effect. Martínez gave no indication of altering his approach, focusing instead on the long-term philosophy. “Our philosophy is that we want to be a team that always goes out for a win, to find a way to control the game, be a dominant force, be dynamic, be flexible tactically.’’
Has he been too loyal to Tim Howard? Joel Robles came in and kept clean sheets against West Brom, Crystal Palace and Liverpool in January and February. “At that time, Joel as a No2 did a magnificent job and he kept the clean sheets, and especially against Crystal Palace and Liverpool were outstanding. He did his job. His position at the club has been reinforced. Now he is competing stronger for that No1 shirt. Joel is 24, and Tim is 36 today [Friday].
Tim Howard has 'very important responsibility in the dressing room (AFP)
“Joel has shown he is ready to step into No1 but Tim’s had a very strong season, he’s very experienced, and with a very important responsibility in the dressing-room. You give someone [Howard] a starting point, and the No2 needs to fight to overcome that. The good thing is we have a No 1 and No 2 who are both reliable.”
For all the murmurs of anxiety at Goodison, Everton march on in Europe, enjoying huge support. “Our fans are incredible. What I’ve experienced this season in Europe is unique. You’re not going to find another club that takes the same numbers, with the same passion, with the way they send us from the hotel to the ground, with the songs and the way they just change the colour of the stadiums to blue is incredible. In the league, it is exactly the same passion.’’
Yet there is a restlessness at home. “We know we can go to Goodison for the last six games of the season, knowing that the fans understand that we need to be together, that we need the support from the beginning. We started the season with real expectations of achieving something special in the league. As it stands we never got any momentum. We need our fans. We need everyone to help the players. We need to use Goodison as our safe place.”
Martínez accepted that Everton were in a relegation fight. “Any team that hasn’t got 40 points in the final third of the season is in a relegation fight. The big advantage I have is that I’ve been through that every season.” He also went down with Wigan Athletic. “Yes, yes, but I’ve been down with 36 points and it’s very tough to get 36 points in this league. It was very painful because it was on the back of winning the FA Cup. The FA Cup final got in the middle of achieving that and we paid the price.”
Roberto Martínez and Dave Whelan win the FA Cup in 2013 (Getty Images)
Martínez does not believe the Europa League will prove a similar distraction but Everton need to pick up some Premier League points quickly, and then focus on building that stronger future under their principled, industrious manager.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...gue-prize-during-difficult-second-season.html
Stanley Parker
Player Valuation: £15m
So you're happy for most of the squad to play twice next week, whilst Newcastle will have a free midweek.
The players have had a free weekend, but I'm worried that they will still be physically and mentally tired.
And a bad result for our strongest team against Kiev would be disastrous for Sunday.
I still think this is a better squad and much bigger than the 07/08 squad.
Last season they showed it and we have added to that as well.
Its all about opinions and maybe because the players are playing nowhere near how they can it clouds some judgements
Stanley Parker
Player Valuation: £15m
Yes, your judgement may well be clouded.
This elderly squad is another year older.
The additions to the squad have been modest. Cover is still poor.
Injuries and the Thursday/Sunday programme have increased the demands on the squad.
My judgement is not clouded maybe yours is
Stanley Parker
Player Valuation: £15m
Ah! The judgements that don't agree with yours are clouded.
Not at all i have had plenty of debate on this forum over the years.
I notice you are new or are someone else with history on here and i also notice you are patronising and trying to score points all the time.
If you don't like what i put don't respond or put me on ignore please
Stanley Parker
Player Valuation: £15m
If you insist on posting outspoken statements, then you're going to provoke some responses that disagree.
You can't just dismiss them all as clouded - now that would be patronising.
This is without question the best squad we have had in the last 20 years, maybe even longer, I challenge anybody to suggest a better squad.
I don't care if people agree or not at my posts.
Best thing to do is ignore each other you just seem to want a reaction all the time with your little digs.
Stanley Parker
Player Valuation: £15m
That's a bold statement. Didn't you want some reaction?
Stanley Parker
Player Valuation: £15m
Would you like to explain how you can assess how strong a squad is?
And how can you prove that this squad is without question better than, say, 2008/9?
Phil Neville played 47 times.
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