Roberto Martinez discussion

[Toffeelover]

Lost his way? I hadn't noticed. Playing the best football we've seen by Everton players for years = lost his way. Erm...

Takeover? I believe that when I see it. In any case, why would new owners desperate to stabilise and ensure they keep the club with its nose in the tv cash trough want to get rid of a manager who'll ensure that stability and employ instead an unknown quantity? That'd be odd. If I were any new owner I'd make sure I tied that manager down with a contract extension.

Results Dave, results never mind pretty football.

Across the park Rodgers did not last!!

 

[Tigger]

Results Dave, results never mind pretty football.

Across the park Rodgers did not last!!

Tbf Rodgers was not playing pretty football

 

[Toffeelover]

Tbf Rodgers was not playing pretty football

That all depended on the colour of your shirt.

 

[Tigger]

That all depended on the colour of your shirt.

Very true but I am rather enjoying what Klopp is serving up so maybe it was a blessing.

 

[Toffeelover]

Very true but I am rather enjoying what Klopp is serving up so maybe it was a blessing.

I agree but Klopp is a better manager than Rodgers and his tenure has been only a couple of weeks. I believe given funds Klopp could change their fortunes.

Would you swop RM for Klopp?

 

[Tigger]

I agree but Klopp is a better manager than Rodgers and his tenure has been only a couple of weeks. I believe given funds Klopp could change their fortunes.

Would you swop RM for Klopp?

Before he went the pit probably yes, but now we have seen close up what a complete helmet he is no thanks.

 

[ijjysmith]

@ianefc

 

[Stanley Parker]

Id say selling Lukaku, Stones, Deulofeu and Barkley would more than cover the cost of that squad, let alone the other players in our squad. They have to spend a lot more before they get to the value of our squad.

That stat doesn't account for the likes of Barkley, Stones or Coleman that cost us pretty much nothing, its just money spent, and they spent that after selling the majority of their team, so had to buy fully made players, we bought potential and have bought it through and made it worth far more than we paid for it.

Everton's squad is still much better than Southampton's.

Southampton should be able to compete with us - their squad has been assembled at great expense. They have, in fact, been big spenders since returning to the top flight in 2012/13, averaging annual gross spend of £43 million in those four years.

On 10 June 2012, Southampton completed the £7 million signing of Burnley striker Jay Rodriguez, breaking the club's record transfer fee. This record was then broken by the £12 million signing of Uruguayan forward Gastón Ramírez from Bologna. The club finished with a net outlay of around £33m, making them the seventh biggest spenders in Europe!

On 11 July 2013, the club's transfer fee record was again broken with the purchase of Victor Wanyama from Celtic for a reported fee of £12.5 million. A month later, on 18 August 2013, the club's transfer fee record was broken a fourth time in two years with the purchase of Daniel Osvaldo from Roma for a reported fee of £15 million. They also signed Croatian centre-back Dejan Lovren from Lyon for a fee reported to be in the region of £8.5 million.

Only in the last two years have purchases been balanced by sales. They have spent £103 million on a lengthy shopping list of players: Shane Long £12 million, Virgil van Dijk £11.5 million, Dusan Tadic £10.9 million, Fraser Forster £10 million, Saido Mané £10 million, Ryan Bertrand £10 million, Pellè £9 million, Jordy Clasie £8 million, Florin Gardos £6 million, Juanmi £5 million, Oriol Romeu £5 million and Soares £4.7 million.

Their academy has been perhaps the most successful in the Premier League, and they have also made a lot of money from player sales, leading to net sales of £26 million in this period. Southampton are the only club in the Premier League without a positive outlay on players over the last two seasons, so are bottom of the so-called net spend table.

 

[degsy]

You know if the utter clown had 1 of them and played Besic I would be happy for him to keep his job.

But he doesnt, on both counts.

TAXI FOR EL LOCO

'TAXI' bit old fashioned that now, shouldn't we be saying Uber now.

to be totally 2015 he should be sacked in a tweet #taxi

 

[Zatara]

His initial view is correct. Past our main superstar types we have a massive drop in quality. He needs time to rebuild the squad.

Is Roberto Martinez holding Everton back?
Date published: Wednesday 23rd December 2015 9:32

It’s a slightly strange experience watching Everton these days. It’s not that they’re bad, incapable of winning or scoring goals, or being tedious no-hopers like Sunderland, Villa or Manchester United, but they sure as all heck aren’t that good either. Or at least, not as good as they probably should be. In the end, you’re just left with the feeling that they should and could be so much better.
The Toffees are in the middle of a run that at the start of the season would have looked like a ripe period for collecting relatively simple points. While one can hardly blame them for losing to Leicester, given plenty of others have done the same in this implausible season, it wouldn’t have have been unreasonable to expect at least seven points from their previous three, against Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Norwich. And yet, they only have three, their assorted fragilities combining to prevent victories in each.
At Carrow Road last week they were utterly dominant in the first half, with Gerard Deloufeu and Romelu Lukaku rampant, combining beautifully for the one goal they did manage to score, but they couldn’t convert their superiority into more, which made a Norwich comeback feel rather inevitable. Of course, that’s exactly what happened, something that happens far too often.
In theory, Everton should be a strong team with a realistic chance of breaking into the top four, particularly in this absurd season when points are scattered around like discarded Quality Street wrappers and nobody seems keen to win anything. They have John Stones, one of the most sought-after young central defenders in the country, one among the Premier League’s most underrated midfielders in James McCarthy, and Romelu Lukaku, a glorious and prolific striker still aged just 22, a walking example of why Jose Mourinho’s instincts are not always exactly spot on. Add Seamus Coleman, Leighton Baines and Ross Barkley to that list, and you have a rather handy looking team.
They also have Roberto Martinez, a manager with a shining reputation as one of the country’s great young bosses and thinkers on the game, one who is spoken of as heading to the very top by those who have known and worked with him.
Additionally, they have stability. Martinez is one of the two managers they have had since 2002, and as teams all around them toss coaches to the wolves at the slightest hint of trouble, Everton maintain that much sought-after state of serenity and consistency, the quality that we are led to believe is the key to success.
And yet, they have been without a trophy for 20 years, the longest dry spell in the club’s 137-year history, finished 11th last season and currently sit in the middle of a profoundly average division. They are capable of excellence but also, too often, of performances that leave the Goodison Park crowd grumbling with dissatisfaction and, perhaps most worryingly for the club, apathy. So why aren’t they better?
One answer is that Martinez simply hasn’t been allowed to make them better. This summer other clubs, of comparable or arguably lesser standing, showed the ambition to sign players like Yohan Cabaye, Xherdan Shaqiri and Dimitri Payet. Everton spent around £15million on Ramiro Fures Mori, Aaron Lennon and Gerard Deulofeu, only one of whom can seriously be argued to be an improvement to the starting XI.
Chairman Bill Kenwright is a fine salesman of his own image, that of a garrulous and passionate chairman who cares about his team as a fan does, and that’s quite possibly true. But that doesn’t mean he’s a good chairman. Everton fans, or at least those who look beyond the PR, have recognised for some time that while Kenwright gives a fine interview, his parsimony is frustrating and has led the club to stagnate as others around them have grown.
Perhaps that’s the reason that a look beyond the top players reveals not a great deal in terms of depth and quality. Their first XI is fine, aside possibly from Stones’s partner in defence and some consistency issues from Barkley and the sometimes dazzling but often frustrating Deulofeu, but a scratch beneath the surface reveals a collection of youngsters and cast-offs, and a large amount of injuries. That Arouna Kone, an honest trier but not much more, has appeared in every league game so far and seemingly retains his place in the team thanks to a hat-trick six weeks ago against Sunderland, should tell you plenty.
But perhaps the uncomfortable truth, and the main reason Everton aren’t perhaps as good as they should be, is that Martinez simply isn’t as good as his reputation suggests. He did, after all, get the Everton job after taking Wigan down (admittedly also winning the FA Cup), and defensive organisation has proved as much of a problem at Goodison as it did at the DW Stadium. Last season they conceded only one goal fewer than relegated Hull, while this term they have continued to show plenty of weaknesses, particularly from set-pieces. The goals against Palace and Norwich both came from this route, and the two basically pointless penalties they conceded against Leicester were indicative of a defence in which panic is set.
Martinez seems to lack anything like a Plan B; when his usual aesthetically pleasing style doesn’t work, he has nowhere else to go. Perhaps that is due to the construction of his squad, but his substitutions are frequently head-scratching, and the persistence with Kone when the more lively Kevin Mirallas and Steven Naismith sit on the bench is baffling.
“We need to be better,” said Martinez after the Leicester defeat. “We conceded three goals, in my eyes with very little threat from Leicester.” He almost seemed to be talking about this as if it was an isolated incident, an aberration among a much more consistent run of defensive solidity, when anyone who has watched them play can clearly see otherwise.
“When you go away from home, the home side is always going to have a say,” Martinez said after the draw with Norwich. “I don’t think anything changed – our intensity was as good in the second half as it was in the first.” Perhaps, much like his chairman, Martinez was trying to put on a positive front, to publicly insist all is well while giving his team both barrels in the dressing room, but if Martinez genuinely believed there wasn’t much difference between his side’s performance in the two halves, then that points to wider problems. There is a fragility to this Everton side that was exposed at Carrow Road, as it has been on a number of occasions this season, and Martinez seeming not to (publicly) recognise this suggests he isn’t doing anything, or at least enough, to rectify that.
There’s a temptation to write Martinez off as a fraud and a spoofer, the managerial equivalent of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and while that would probably be too harsh, he’s not exactly earning his shining reputation. Everton are still handily-placed to achieve a decent league finish this season, and are a long way from being a bad team. It’s just that they should be so much better than they are.
Nick Miller

 

[Zatara]

Or look at it like this for quality:

GK -- ??? / ???
LB -- Baines / Garbutt (loan)
LCB -- Jagielka / Mori /Galloway
RCB -- Stones / Browning (out for season)
RB -- Coleman / ???
DM -- Barry / McCarthy / Besic
CM -- ??? /???
LW -- ??? / ???
AM -- Barkley /Cleverley
RW -- Deulofeu / Lennon
CF -- Lukaku / ???

Lots of key positions left there and heres the remaining players:

Howard
Robles
Oviedo
Hibbert
Gibson
Naismith
Osman
Pienaar
McGeady
McAleny
Kone
Mirallas

Of those only Mirallas has comparable quality to get in the squad but will be off in Jan.

Martinez has improved us in LCB / DM / RW / CF positions and still has the rest of the squad to improve.

Perhaps that’s the reason that a look beyond the top players reveals not a great deal in terms of depth and quality. Their first XI is fine, aside possibly from Stones’s partner in defence and some consistency issues from Barkley and the sometimes dazzling but often frustrating Deulofeu, but a scratch beneath the surface reveals a collection of youngsters and cast-offs, and a large amount of injuries

Good write up, hard to argue with much, except I would say we have a very decent set of subs.. injuries aside.

First team
Howard
Coleman, Baines, Jagielka, Stones
Deulofeu, Barkley, McCarthy, Barry
Kone, Lukaku

Reserve team
Robles
Oviedo, Mori, Browning, Galloway
Lennon, Besic, Gibson, Cleverly
Naismith, Mirallas

Pienaar, Osman on the subs, subs bench

 

[Zatara]

Agree with all other than your point about the first team...there really isnt anything quality about GK/CM/LW positions and we are also lighy in quality depth at RB/AM/CF positions.

Theres 12 players in the squad who need recycling out and better quality brought in.

It's like all stuff from sources like 'Goal' and 'football365' (and disreputable dailys) a trawl of fan forums to get the skeleton structure of an article on which they hang the saggy flesh of some of the most overblown criticisms amongst fans about their players/manager. Utter bunkum that's a glorified blog.

A list:

• He says we should realistically be breaking into the top four. What utter nonsense. Based on what? Our massive CL like spending? It's a knuckle head assertion he's scooped up off a forum that's been repeated on numerous occasions there.
• He argues we have stability 'and yet they're without a trophy for 20 years'. Erm, yes? How in the name of all that's holy is that down to Martinez?
• He's stating there's nothing beyond a first team at Everton - an assertion that beggars belief and just about clinches the suspicion that he's really not au fait with Everton at all.
• He falls into the trap of condemning Everton at this stage as some mid-table fodder club when a cursory glance at the spread of points shows exactly how tight the table is down to 11th position and that no team is a comfortable top half of the table team. A bit of exaggeration to work his 'argument' in and to cover his tracks.
• He states Martinez might not be as good as everyone suggests and proceeds to list his failings from last season onward without a proper scope of all of his time here. That's important because the season he omitted to mention proved beyond doubt that this manager can take a club like Everton and get an excellent season out of them. Oh, he also forgot to mention the small matter of a cup run this season that sees us on the cusp of a final appearance. Funny that. Must have slipped his mind.
• The working in of words like 'fraud' and 'spoofer' tells me all I need to know of that cut of that 'journalist'. A fraud who creates a club out of nothing at Swansea, wins a cup with a backwater club like Wigan, gets a well established PL club like Everton their best ever PL points total (not just beating Moyes and everyone else's attempts but smashing right through their best efforts), has us standing one step away from Wembley this season. That manager who did that being called a 'fraud' by some cub reporter who's scratching a living knocking out tosh like this. Laughable.

Hope that helps.

 

[Zatara]

Good post that. Some players like shaw have been sold from the youth team and also signings like lovren then resold.

This has enabled them to strengthen in many more areas than Martinez. We have kept our top players and are gradually adding to them whilst southampton sell theirs and sign a lower level player and hope they develop.

Our model is better but takes longer

Southampton should be able to compete with us - their squad has been assembled at great expense. They have, in fact, been big spenders since returning to the top flight in 2012/13, averaging annual gross spend of £43 million in those four years.

On 10 June 2012, Southampton completed the £7 million signing of Burnley striker Jay Rodriguez, breaking the club's record transfer fee. This record was then broken by the £12 million signing of Uruguayan forward Gastón Ramírez from Bologna. The club finished with a net outlay of around £33m, making them the seventh biggest spenders in Europe!

On 11 July 2013, the club's transfer fee record was again broken with the purchase of Victor Wanyama from Celtic for a reported fee of £12.5 million. A month later, on 18 August 2013, the club's transfer fee record was broken a fourth time in two years with the purchase of Daniel Osvaldo from Roma for a reported fee of £15 million. They also signed Croatian centre-back Dejan Lovren from Lyon for a fee reported to be in the region of £8.5 million.

Only in the last two years have purchases been balanced by sales. They have spent £103 million on a lengthy shopping list of players: Shane Long £12 million, Virgil van Dijk £11.5 million, Dusan Tadic £10.9 million, Fraser Forster £10 million, Saido Mané £10 million, Ryan Bertrand £10 million, Pellè £9 million, Jordy Clasie £8 million, Florin Gardos £6 million, Juanmi £5 million, Oriol Romeu £5 million and Soares £4.7 million.

Their academy has been perhaps the most successful in the Premier League, and they have also made a lot of money from player sales, leading to net sales of £26 million in this period. Southampton are the only club in the Premier League without a positive outlay on players over the last two seasons, so are bottom of the so-called net spend table.

 

[streeky]

As you will have guessed(!) I live in Wigan and talk to Wigan fans a lot. What they talk about all the time is winning the FA Cup. This was so uplifting for them the whole town got a buzz from it,and still is! In the World Football forum a few months back I told of a tour of Wigans stadium(never been there before except for a couple of evening functions) and all the staff I spoke to had nothing but praise for Martinez and his time at Wigan. The feeling is that they were always going to be relegated, but that Martinez worked miracles keeping them in the Prem so long.

yep but we have already won the fa cup in our history, but I don't under estimate the love wigan fans feel for him helping to get them something look back on.

 

[Deleted member 24970]

I know, 20 odd years of being mediocre and suddenly some have ridiculous expectations, i know we've got 2 or 3 top top players now days but kinell, be half sensible . Bobby raised everyones hopes to early now its a stick the Bawk lot are beating him with.

Funny thing is these people probably the ones that clapped the board in years gone by

Sorry mate but MARTINEZ said he will have us in the top four. He was really unlucky getting 72points and still miss out, saying that he got it horribly wrong at Southampton (a) and Palace (h) in particular that season. He set the standards for himself and he has to be judged by that to some degree.