I find this thread really interesting if you go back to the start and work your way through it.
Essentially, people were generally a bit cautious about his appointment because he'd got Wigan relegated. I don't really have any problem with this myself, that was always going to happen eventually and it's worth pointing out that Wenger, Klopp and a number of other top managers got teams relegated before hitting the heights later in their careers (winning the FA Cup with a team like Wigan should at worst cancel this out though in my eyes).
I think it's fair to say that all other than the most sceptical of Everton fans were won over after Martinez's first season - a record points total that would usually be good enough for a top 4 spot and some absolutely brilliant football at times, all done on a negative net spend.
The split (if that's what you want to call it) comes because last season was so poor. Do you judge a manager on just that one season and does what he did before have any bearing on whether you stick with him and show faith? For me it should do, but I don't claim to be right all the time.
I think it's more interesting to look at what happened last season and try to understand why it went so wrong, it wasn't like Martinez decided to stop doing all the things that made us so good in his first season.
I saw (and still see) a lot of stuff about Martinez's "tactical inflexibility", unwillingness to play with two wingers and reliance on Barry etc as the sticks to beat him with. For me, last season wasn't about one thing in particular, it was a number of factors which created a sort of perfect storm.
1) Individual mistakes leading to goals. I believe we still had more than double any other team in the league. Do you blame the manager for this? How does one coach these individual errors out of players? I don't have the answer but it was certainly a big factor in a number of our results.
2) Injuries to key players at inopportune times - every squad deals with injuries, but we had to contend with having injuries to the likes of all of our wide players at any given time or all of our creative players. You have a squad to deal with this sort of thing, but it's difficult to cope if all of the players in a certain position are out. Apart from anything else, it means any underperforming players have to keep playing.
3) Refereeing decisions. They say they average out of the course of a season. B******s. The spate of appalling refereeing decisions (game-changing decisions) we were on the wrong end of between November and January was something I'd never seen before.
4) Key players being in poor form. Again, it's to be expected at certain times and most squads deal with it, but alongside the 2nd point it becomes a bigger problem.
5) The Goodison crowd - since QPR at home I'd never witnessed anything like it before whilst following Everton. The atmosphere was horrible. You can make whatever excuses you like about why the crowd were this way but I'd take issue with anyone who thinks this has had no bearing on our players at all. There were visible reactions from our players at times because of it.
On these points, I'm not sure Martinez shoulders much/any of the blame, but the net result was that confidence was on the floor. The confidence, as much as anything, was the biggest factor in our poor season as far as I'm concerned.
I also don't buy the "tactical inflexibility" argument which a lot of the most vocal "Martinez Out" brigade were trumpeting at the time. I can remember games where we played 4231, 433, 343 and 442. We tried to set up to defend and play on the counter in some games, a purely possession-based game in some and even a few where we employed a lot of long balls, We saw experiments with the likes of Baines at centre mid etc. I don't think a stubborn reliance on a method had anything to do with it, personally.
Having said all that, which is mostly in defence of Martinez and sets out some fairly hefty extenuating circumstances in his favour, he shouldn't be absolved of all blame for the season...
Firstly I think his transfers in 2014 need to be called into serious question. We put all of our eggs into one basket with Lukaku and whilst that was understandable, it meant we had to take a punt on a loan for Christian Atsu to replace Deulofeu, bring Samuel Eto'o in on a free as cover for the injured Kone, rely on an over-the-hill Distin and an inadequate Alcaraz as cover for our two centre backs, rely on McGeady as a serious member of the 1st team squad and count on Gibson's fitness as cover for Gareth Barry and also rely on Pienaar and Osman's fitness as our creative outlets if Barkley wasn't at the races. Besic was the only other arrival and whilst promising, looked raw and not ready to be involved in the 1st team on a regular basis (despite what a few on here would argue). Lukaku aside, the transfers of last summer were largely disastrous.
Secondly, there were simply some odd decisions as far as team selections are concerned. Most notably the insistence on playing Barkley or Naismith out wide which seemed to suck the form out of both of them and also the inexplicable decision to restore Howard to the team after his injury when he had been poor and Robles had played well (a mistake I'm alarmed he has made again this season).
Martinez doesn't escape last season without criticism, but I think a lot of what happened was outside of his control and the various things which were going wrong snowballed and spiralled out of control. I don't think his approach has been markedly different this season, but we have a more settled squad, have got rid of some of the deadwood and alleged trouble makers and whilst injuries haven't been kind, we haven't had to contend with the sort of crises we had in various positions last season.
My argument last season was that we needed to have faith in the manager and that his first season showed that his approach could be one which would be successful if we trusted him. I don't have any issue with the people who wanted him gone at the height of the bad results in December to February, but I maintain that there's enough evidence to simply trust that his approach will pay dividends eventually.
