I watched yesterday and I felt it was more like watching us in the first season. Not necessarily in style, but in the fact that Martinez was trying different things and they were working quite well.
Martinez is never going to be a manager who drills to banks of 4 to play the same way every week, irrespective of the opposition, like Pulis does. He brought in a lot of subtle changes on a game by game basis that seemed to work. For example this season we have counter attacked far quicker and been willing to hit longer balls forward which is a change.
Defensively yesterday we also changed things quite radically. It looked like Jagielka man Marked Aguero. Barry man Marked Silva and McCarthy man Marked Toure. Those 3 are as good as any in the league at the moment and we nullified them very well. It also allowed stones to be the free man and move forward up the pitch to start attacks.
We had almost nullified those 3 and the threat of City when they scored a goal a little out of the blue thanks in part to a mistake from Howard. I'm not going to castigate him, I actually though he had one of his best games yesterday, but he will be disappointed with that goal, but I make the point to illustrate it was a mistake that led to the goal, as opposed to a failure in the tactical changes that caused it.
This is why it reminds me of the first season. We made changes that positively impacted upon the game and could have swung it our way. Had we have tried to match them up conventionally, they'd have steamrolled us as they did Chelsea last week. So it gives me some grounds for optimism going forward.
In the end, yesterday we missed Baines. Neither Browning nor Galloway posed an attacking threat going forward. It meant they were always happy to bomb players forward without risk of a counter.
