In December 2014 I wrote a rare article, highlighting several issues in the team, but concluding that it would be “nonsensical to sack Martinez at this stage”, and that the Spaniard deserved more time after his brilliant first season at the club. Well, here we are 13 months on, and very little has changed. One thing that has though, is my and many others’ stance on the manager – who I now believe is actively harming the prospects of the team on an unbelievable level.
Many of those issues remain, although some of them are much less understandable now than they were 13 months ago. For instance, at that point I rationalised that it would have been difficult for Martinez to predict the extent of the decline of Tim Howard from good Premier League goalkeeper to worst human in the World – but since then there have been 3 transfer windows and seemingly no attempt to replace the now 36-year-old. Joel Robles has established himself as a reliable fan favourite whose presence leads to a more confident defence and has contributed largely to the one redeeming aspect of this miserable season, but Martinez still persists with Howard. Worse still, he comes out every other week with some infuriating and hypocritical tripe about how experience is more important than ability, or how Howard never blames defenders for his mistakes (???). In fairness, he’s probably too busy sarcastically applauding the Gwladys Street to bother. Though the 1st goal today was in part due to Stones’ weird decision-making, Howard’s reaction speed and choice to kick Andre Ayew were even more pitiful. Indeed, speaking of Stones, 13 months ago I was still under the impression that Martinez was a manager who could be relied upon to improve our talented young players, whereas now it’s evident he’s actively restricting their development – the defensive ones at least. Stones isn’t learning from his mistakes, as he’s receiving no guidance from the manager, and is surely losing confidence by being part of a woeful system that leaks goals every week. And I don’t blame any individual player for that fact, apart from Howard, and its not his fault he’s relentlessly picked and praised anyway. I blame the manager, the manager who doesn’t work on set pieces, whose teams have, apart from one season, always been hopeless defensively. The manager who picks 4 highly-rated international defenders every week, usually puts two defensive midfielders in front of them (one of whom, Gareth Barry, has been excellent all season), but has no idea how to organise a team defensively, seems to never address obvious problems, whose game management is non-existent, and sets his team up so that the play is high risk, and the defending is incredibly passive.
Indeed, perhaps Martinez’ decline is indicative of a wider shift in footballing trend. In Martinez’ first season, Spain were World and European Champions, and the tactical vogue remained that of a possession based style that suited the Catalan’s upbringing and ideological purity. But just as Spain were dumped out of Brazil by a tactically innovative, high-pressing, counterattacking Chile side, football’s new direction has been in favour of those who seek a high intensity game, realise there’s nothing inherently good about possession in certain areas of the pitch, and seek balance and quick transition in all that they do. It is not a coincidence that more and more often teams who play away from home and regularly have less than 45% possession are winning more and more frequently – Martinez’ Everton too-often embody all that recent footballing years have suggested is an outmoded model. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to be a successful side that also likes to dominate possession, but it is impossible to be a successful side if ‘pragmatism’ is a dirty word, you refuse to acknowledge that football as a concept is always developing and stick to an ideal that seems not to be working, and crucially, you cannot set up a team defensively (which the other premises lead to)! Mauricio Pochettino is not a luddite from a bygone era, wedded to 4-4-2, long balls, and #passion – he and his Tottenham team is everything Martinez and Everton *should* be.
But even putting aside wider concerns about philosophy and tactical inflexibility, Martinez has made so many bizarre decisions this season and last. Whilst in his first season he actively won Everton games through his intelligent substitutions, he now appears reticent to make a change before the 80th minute, ignoring clear issues on the pitch. His rotation of the squad has been abysmal – Naismith never played, then started every game for a month and a half, then never played again. Mirallas and Lennon have both been massively underplayed, whilst Kone – an old, slow, Striker whose career was nearly finished by a terrible knee injury – has been forced to be a pretty awful winger for most of the season, usually in front of an inexperienced centre back at left back. I’m not slating Kone, he’s had a much better season than I expected, and could still be a useful squad player, but the manager ran him into the ground and made his naming on the team sheet a source of almost-universal ire. Muhamed Besic has looked Everton’s best player until his injury today, after his injury-enforced appearances, but could barely get on the pitch before or after recovering from his hamstring injury against Chelsea. And we all know James McCarthy would have been straight back in the team to replace him anyway. And that’s not even mentioning Joel.
Yes, the atmosphere at Goodison is pretty toxic, and it can’t help the players. But do you really blame the fans? Fans who spend so much of their time and money watching a ridiculously exciting possibility painfully fade away into a consistently agonising reality, because of the decisions and failings of the manager. And as much as I credit the manager with bringing a lot of those players to the club in the first place, I blame him for failing them time and time again.
Everton have been dreadful for 18 months. We’ve won 6 Premier League games all season. We’ve drawn 11. We’ve conceded the most goals of any team in the league at home. We’ve not beaten a team outside of the bottom 3 since September. Yes, there’s the cup semi-final to look forward to (a cup semi-final we’ve had to play one Premier League opponent to get to – Norwich city at home, who we couldn’t beat in 120 minutes), much like there was a Europa League tie against Dynamo Kyiv to look forward to. But it’s not good enough for Everton. It’s not good enough for this squad. And any other manager in the league could do a better job, I firmly believe that. So it’s time for the manager to go, any other equally talented or ambitious club would have sacked him already. Roberto Martinez may have promised Bill Kenwright he’d get us in the Champions League, but we’ve been a hell of a lot closer to the Championship for too long.
