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Roberto Martinez discussion

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Boring ineffective football is not entertaining, it's tedious in the extreme. I hate the way people are making out that Moyes was a long-ball merchant and that Martinez has us playing like Barcelona, when neither is true.

Other than the victory over QPR, we haven't played any entertaining football in 2014, and it's mostly been boring, tedious and ineffective.

But it's Martinez first season so he should be given time to try and prove himself, but I have a bad feeling that he is awful in the transfer market, and that he will soon undo all the good work and progress that we experienced under Moyes.
 
Dymak said:
Other than the victory over QPR, we haven't played any entertaining football in 2014, and it's mostly been boring, tedious and ineffective.
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Yeah, it's fair to say we're stuttering a bit of late.

Some top results in the cup, but we've shipped 4 goals twice and even our league wins this year (villa and west ham) we've struggled and ground them out a bit. Neither were great to watch.

Hopefully we can turn it around by thumping Cardiff.
 
Allezfan said:
If Martinez doesn't win a trophy then he's failed and it was the wrong call to appoint him.

We need to win a trophy, it's been too long and it's hanging over the club, that takes priority over anything else. But I do think we're more likely to win one with Bobby then we were with Moyes. We have a ruthlessness at home vs poor teams, this season, that could serve us well in a cup if the draw is kind to us.

The Fulham league cup game was a huge misstep from Martinez but I honestly think with arsenal we were just unlucky to get the worst possible draw.
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He's excused for that as he's got to be given the chance to learn his team with the Fulham game. We have a small squad and he was trying to utilise as much as he could afford to. He's also theoretically biding his time to buy in his own players with a relatively large kitty in the summer (optimistic, i know).
It's possible the change in style means we take more points from those below us, whilst meaning we get picked off by those above untill we buy quality in to become competitive with those around us.
 
bluemangroup said:
It's possible the change in style means we take more points from those below us, whilst meaning we get picked off by those above untill we buy quality in to become competitive with those around us.
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There's a small sample size, but I've been wondering this myself.

We've not got a good record vs the top 5 this year but we've been pretty ruthless against the bottom half.

Too early to come to any real conclusions, mind. Plus the points totals the top 7 are racking up could just mean that it's a particularly poor bottom half this year.
 

Even if we would lose every one of these remaining matches i would back him 100%. We will go to europe, though...and next season will be big for us
 
Allezfan said:
There's a small sample size, but I've been wondering this myself.

We've not got a good record vs the top 5 this year but we've been pretty ruthless against the bottom half.

Too early to come to any real conclusions, mind. Plus the points totals the top 7 are racking up could just mean that it's a particularly poor bottom half this year.
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I think the tactics allow for us to be consistent against the bottom half. We keep hold of the ball so often, its difficult for inferior sides to score against us. But we just arent carving sides open like we did last year. We'd rip sides apart and then not have a striker good enough, whereas now we have a genuine threat up front and we seemingly cant break down teams as much. That may be down to the appalling form of people like Pienaar, but even games weve won, we've won by spectacular goals we cant rely upon every week.
 
It would be interesting on this point about not scoring from corners what the numbers are, do we get the same number as in Moyes time or
Ihaters said:
There are more plan B's than just hoofball though.

How about instead of 2 DM's when losing, perhaps go for just one, how about pushing the DM's to CM and keeping back one of Baines/Coleman, swap a DM for an AM so we have 2 behind the striker, perhaps start Baines and/or Coleman further forwards/backwards depending on whats needed, get them passing triangles or squares instead of 1-2's, or if they are playing 1-2's how about triangles or squares? and so on, and so on.

Plan B doesnt have to just be hoof, it can be far more subtle and make just as much difference.

Also swapping like for like isn't plan B, its plan A still. A lot of teams add more atacking options to their team when required at the expense of defensive ones. Its not a new concept the GOT forum dreamt up, its a real thing.

We all like our new shiney Plan A when its working, its ace, some however would like to see something a little different than keeping on doing the same thing when its not working... a Plan B if you like.


Instead we do the same, over and over with inevitable results. (This of course only applies to when its clearly no working, like Arsenal, Liverpoo etc). When it is working and we are the better team, Chelsea, Spurs etc, keep going, but don't be afraid to change what we're doing a little when required.


Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein
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Sorry mate that's not plan b that's just playing "proper" football players reacting to what's on the field which to my mind is exactly what Martinez is aiming for.

The extension of your premise is players never do this during a game that they don't move from their allotted position on the blackboard and that's not the case at all.

The league draw at the Emirates was notable for just such fluidity who can forget Jags breaking from MF up the left channel forcing the attack demolishing the stringent shackling philosophy of the previous regime a way of playing adapting without instruction.

The ultimate is not to manage the game from the touchline but have the players boss it on the pitch with plans b,c, d etc (if you like) occurring naturally, but it takes nerve and time.

The best perfect THEIR method and as I've said numerous times you could watch games of Brazil, Germany, Spain and Italy in silhouette form and identify each because they don't change ... and they are the best historically and at present.

Plan b in practice doesn't really exist improvement in certain areas - yes.
 
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bluemangroup said:
I think the tactics allow for us to be consistent against the bottom half. We keep hold of the ball so often, its difficult for inferior sides to score against us. But we just arent carving sides open like we did last year. We'd rip sides apart and then not have a striker good enough, whereas now we have a genuine threat up front and we seemingly cant break down teams as much. That may be down to the appalling form of people like Pienaar, but even games weve won, we've won by spectacular goals we cant rely upon every week.
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I think you're being a little too negative.

We scored 4 goals vs qpr, 4 goals vs stoke and 4 goals vs Fulham.

We're not on great form right now, but we have carved teams open this year. The first 45 minutes of Newcastle at home was as good as I've ever seen Everton play.
 

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