Yesterday was a watershed for me personally.
Up until now, I was (for the most part) in favour of giving him time. The attacking football he has us playing at times really is excellent - the best I can remember clearly in my time supporting Everton (I'm 34, so have only hazy recollections of our truly great sides).
He also APPEARED to be learning a lesson that defending is actually an important part of football.
But then yesterday happened. Now it's not very often that you can boil an entire game down to one specific moment, but my god, WHAT was he doing with that Lennon substitution?
You're 2-0 up, and have been comfortable for the majority of the game, but are down to 10 men. Your opposition, anonymous for much of the match and clearly out of sorts compared to what's been an exceptional season from them, are probably wondering if it's ever going to be possible to beat you, after 15 failed attempts. But then they get a big psychological boost. Not only does their tormentor-in-chief miss a penalty, but a moment or two later he misses a 1 on 1, either of which would have killed the game stone dead.
That sort of incident is ALWAYS going to bring a reaction from the trailing team. We've all watched enough football to know that, and god knows Martinez should have.
Now in that moment, he looked at the game and decided to take off one of our most effective players on the day. Now even if we decide that Lennon WAS knackered (though to be completely honest i hadn't seen much evidence of it) and needed replacing... why in the name of god would you bring on Niasse - a striker who (even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and say he'll end up a good player for us) has currently appeared WAY off Premier League pace? Why would you not bring on Barry at that stage, to just sit deep, sure things up, drop between the centre backs where needed etc? Or if Barry really couldn't manage 20mins, then god, even Osman could do that role!
Or failing that, you've got Deulofeu sat there twiddling his thumbs... bring him on, with instructions to emulate what Lennon was doing. He's not the best defensively in the world, but I'm sure he could use his pace to hassle and harry for 20mins.
What you DON'T do is bring on a second, completely untested striker and throw him into a situation like that. It was comfortably the most suicidal substitution i've ever seen, and while yes, we still should have defended all 3 goals much better, the team was visibly screwed by that change.
I had a long conversation with someone yesterday who was defending the substitution saying "Martinez obviously thought it would stretch the play and let us hit on the counter. I laughed, because in that situation, who in their right mind would WANT to stretch the play?! But then I realised he's probably entirely right. Martinez gives the impression that he would prefer to score a 3rd and maybe win that game 3-2 (despite the massively increased risk of something going catastrophically wrong) than just grind it out and take the 2-0 win which (for the majority of that game) we easily deserved.
Personally I think it's time for a change. We've got a phenomenally (sorry) talented team there, and it's being wasted in large part due to a manager who doesn't appreciate that the most important thing about football is winning games. I'm sure he (and many here) couldn't care less, but yesterday was the day Martinez finally lost my confidence. It's going to take a lot to get it back.
