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Roberto Martinez Discussion - Including Live Poll (Poll Reset 1st May)

Martinez in or out?

  • In

  • Out

  • Getting splinters eating cheese on toast on the fence

Results are only viewable after voting.
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The Mighty Quint said:
jose-morhino-was-pumped-after-chelseas-goal-against-liverpool-a.gif
Click to expand...

Not even lying the thought of him doing that for us at the RS makes me tingle...

PROPER TINGLE.
 
When I consider this season it does get harder an harder to justify. If we think back to the autumn when we had despatched Sunderland & Villa scoring 10 goals in the process (both had new managers and were doing ok) it looked like things had turned. We just never capitalised (for reasons I'll suggest below).

Back then we had a centre forward who was leading the scoring charts (and has continued too). A midfielder in Barkley who was not far off Mahrez in the scoring and assist charts (certainly not when you consider how much Mahrez has slowed down) and Deulofeu who had a similar number of assists to Ozil. While Lukaku's form has remained quite consistent, Barkley and Deulofeu have tailed off.

The question I though, imagine if we'd have kept those 3 playing well where we might be. Imagine having say, Harry Kane, Mahrez and Ozil in your team? All you would have to do is ensure the other 7 kept things tight and you would do well not to win the league, never mind not be competing or it. It would be astonishing the idea that you'd be in 14th. Yet this is where we found ourselves. All Leicester have done is essentially that, had Mahrez and Vardy and made sure everyone else kept things tight. The only difference we had was that we had an additional attacking talent over them!

You can see now though, complacency set in big time. Against Sunderland we stopped with 20 minutes to play. We could have scored 8-9 had we continued. Against Villa even more so, we stopped after an hour when w could have also scored 7/8. I never worried about it much at the time but it us built a complacency. I remember Alex Fergusan saying, the season City won the league with Aguero that he knew his side had lost it when they through away a two goal lead in a 4-4 game Everton. They still had a 6 point advantage at that point and went on to throw more points away, but he said he turned to his assistant when we equalised and said "that's it the leagues done". He qualified this by stating once complacency sets in you are finished.

Shortly after the two games I mention, we whacked Norwich and drew and were cruising against Bournemouth and drew. In both those games a top team, with a top manager would have won by a cricket score (particularly Norwich). The players to me though reflect the manager who is complacent. I don't think he or the players really know how to break free from that.

We went from having 3 of the most potent attacking weapon and just needing to be solid to ripping up the whole structure. It really is simple when you get to that point. You have star men, you then have 7 covering for them. Central defenders defend, fullbacks stay goalside and stop crosses, and midfielders cover preventing the opposition playing. That is what Leicester have done.

Yet we had a goalkeeper who was useless and a centre half who wanted to play like Maldini. Fullbacks who wanted to be wingers and midfield players who have not proved up to the job at covering the increasingly insurmountable holes that have appeared. We then changed the system to cover for this. Sometimes playing 3 centre halves. Sometimes dropping Deulofeu to play 2 more defensive wingers in the team etc. All because, from what I can see Martinez will not tell his team to be pragmatic at times.

It's very hard to justify that. He let complacency set in in the hope we would annihilate teams every week. It doesn't work like that. We had done the hard work as well. All that was needed was a bit if discipline from the team and we could have been in and around the top 4.
 
catcherintherye said:
When I consider this season it does get harder an harder to justify. If we think back to the autumn when we had despatched Sunderland & Villa scoring 10 goals in the process (both had new managers and were doing ok) it looked like things had turned. We just never capitalised (for reasons I'll suggest below).

Back then we had a centre forward who was leading the scoring charts (and has continued too). A midfielder in Barkley who was not far off Mahrez in the scoring and assist charts (certainly not when you consider how much Mahrez has slowed down) and Deulofeu who had a similar number of assists to Ozil. While Lukaku's form has remained quite consistent, Barkley and Deulofeu have tailed off.

The question I though, imagine if we'd have kept those 3 playing well where we might be. Imagine having say, Harry Kane, Mahrez and Ozil in your team? All you would have to do is ensure the other 7 kept things tight and you would do well not to win the league, never mind not be competing or it. It would be astonishing the idea that you'd be in 14th. Yet this is where we found ourselves. All Leicester have done is essentially that, had Mahrez and Vardy and made sure everyone else kept things tight. The only difference we had was that we had an additional attacking talent over them!

You can see now though, complacency set in big time. Against Sunderland we stopped with 20 minutes to play. We could have scored 8-9 had we continued. Against Villa even more so, we stopped after an hour when w could have also scored 7/8. I never worried about it much at the time but it us built a complacency. I remember Alex Fergusan saying, the season City won the league with Aguero that he knew his side had lost it when they through away a two goal lead in a 4-4 game Everton. They still had a 6 point advantage at that point and went on to throw more points away, but he said he turned to his assistant when we equalised and said "that's it the leagues done". He qualified this by stating once complacency sets in you are finished.

Shortly after the two games I mention, we whacked Norwich and drew and were cruising against Bournemouth and drew. In both those games a top team, with a top manager would have won by a cricket score (particularly Norwich). The players to me though reflect the manager who is complacent. I don't think he or the players really know how to break free from that.

We went from having 3 of the most potent attacking weapon and just needing to be solid to ripping up the whole structure. It really is simple when you get to that point. You have star men, you then have 7 covering for them. Central defenders defend, fullbacks stay goalside and stop crosses, and midfielders cover preventing the opposition playing. That is what Leicester have done.

Yet we had a goalkeeper who was useless and a centre half who wanted to play like Maldini. Fullbacks who wanted to be wingers and midfield players who have not proved up to the job at covering the increasingly insurmountable holes that have appeared. We then changed the system to cover for this. Sometimes playing 3 centre halves. Sometimes dropping Deulofeu to play 2 more defensive wingers in the team etc. All because, from what I can see Martinez will not tell his team to be pragmatic at times.

It's very hard to justify that. He let complacency set in in the hope we would annihilate teams every week. It doesn't work like that. We had done the hard work as well. All that was needed was a bit if discipline from the team and we could have been in and around the top 4.
Click to expand...

Applauds - well said.
 

bluestevon said:
Mate journalists check in on this site - no doubt about that, and pretty sure unless they are braindead then they will have earmarked you as a poster to keep a watch on when they say something, from that POV - wise move not saying any more than you have - else it will start popping up in rumour columns before the time is wright and all that will do is kill your source dead as a stream of snippets that you pass on, so nay problemos
Click to expand...
...added to this, @Moomin has a deeply embedded ITK at Stoke.
And with @oldblue contributing liberal dashes of his 'unique' take on things, the journos must love GOT.
 

catcherintherye said:
When I consider this season it does get harder an harder to justify. If we think back to the autumn when we had despatched Sunderland & Villa scoring 10 goals in the process (both had new managers and were doing ok) it looked like things had turned. We just never capitalised (for reasons I'll suggest below).

Back then we had a centre forward who was leading the scoring charts (and has continued too). A midfielder in Barkley who was not far off Mahrez in the scoring and assist charts (certainly not when you consider how much Mahrez has slowed down) and Deulofeu who had a similar number of assists to Ozil. While Lukaku's form has remained quite consistent, Barkley and Deulofeu have tailed off.

The question I though, imagine if we'd have kept those 3 playing well where we might be. Imagine having say, Harry Kane, Mahrez and Ozil in your team? All you would have to do is ensure the other 7 kept things tight and you would do well not to win the league, never mind not be competing or it. It would be astonishing the idea that you'd be in 14th. Yet this is where we found ourselves. All Leicester have done is essentially that, had Mahrez and Vardy and made sure everyone else kept things tight. The only difference we had was that we had an additional attacking talent over them!

You can see now though, complacency set in big time. Against Sunderland we stopped with 20 minutes to play. We could have scored 8-9 had we continued. Against Villa even more so, we stopped after an hour when w could have also scored 7/8. I never worried about it much at the time but it us built a complacency. I remember Alex Fergusan saying, the season City won the league with Aguero that he knew his side had lost it when they through away a two goal lead in a 4-4 game Everton. They still had a 6 point advantage at that point and went on to throw more points away, but he said he turned to his assistant when we equalised and said "that's it the leagues done". He qualified this by stating once complacency sets in you are finished.

Shortly after the two games I mention, we whacked Norwich and drew and were cruising against Bournemouth and drew. In both those games a top team, with a top manager would have won by a cricket score (particularly Norwich). The players to me though reflect the manager who is complacent. I don't think he or the players really know how to break free from that.

We went from having 3 of the most potent attacking weapon and just needing to be solid to ripping up the whole structure. It really is simple when you get to that point. You have star men, you then have 7 covering for them. Central defenders defend, fullbacks stay goalside and stop crosses, and midfielders cover preventing the opposition playing. That is what Leicester have done.

Yet we had a goalkeeper who was useless and a centre half who wanted to play like Maldini. Fullbacks who wanted to be wingers and midfield players who have not proved up to the job at covering the increasingly insurmountable holes that have appeared. We then changed the system to cover for this. Sometimes playing 3 centre halves. Sometimes dropping Deulofeu to play 2 more defensive wingers in the team etc. All because, from what I can see Martinez will not tell his team to be pragmatic at times.

It's very hard to justify that. He let complacency set in in the hope we would annihilate teams every week. It doesn't work like that. We had done the hard work as well. All that was needed was a bit if discipline from the team and we could have been in and around the top 4.
Click to expand...
Absolutely spot on mate, agree with every word.

I remember posting on here very early on in the season when a lot of people were saying we would get better and it was only a matter of time before we moved up the league. I was saying Barkley, Lukaku and Deulofeu were never going to keep up the form they were showing at that point for the entire season. I was concerned that we hadn't picked up enough points while they were flying, and that suggested we would really start to struggle once their form tailed off. Unfortunately, those concerns have turned out to be well founded.
 

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