catcherintherye
Player Valuation: £80m
Walker did bring in some quality players (Parkinson, Limpar and I liked Amokachi too), he was just too weak and the players never seemed to have any real passion or spark. I think we are certainly missing that spirit and aggression currently so I can see that similarity. I think Martinez viewing everything as phenomenal is not good, even if it is just for the cameras. At first it gives you a lift, but eventually you need to have a balanced view, this is what the fans feed off. The atmosphere at the ground is flat at the moment
It's a hard one for Martinez really. I think people really took to Martinez's positivity at first, particularly as Moyes tended to air on the side of cautious pessimism. In everything though the best managers tend to find a balance.
Martinez's optimism is both a strength and weakness, but I can understand how it begins to get grating for people. I think the bigger worry one would have though is whether that lets players off the hook a bit. Maybe a culture of making defensive lapses but being patted on the back and being told we "are doing the right things" means people don't fear conceding a goal as we may have done under Moyes. Martinez has openly said he's not scared of making mistakes as long as we learn from them, but too many people making too many mistakes can mean you are in too difficult a situation before you start to learn from your mistakes. I supposed it's the trade off to having players liker Barkley included and encouraged.
What is prescient about this thread and about your post though is that there are similarities. It's not that we stopped playing good football under Royle, but we brought in a counter balance. We recognised our weaknesses and rectified them. (Watson was too easy to get at and lacked pace, Southall looked a bit ropey and people played through our midfield). We placed Parkinson/Horne/Ebrell infront of the back four, Hincliffe played a bit at wide left which allowed players like Limpar and Stuart to flourish further up the pitch. It also meant Watson was "got at" less and he could focus on what he was good at.
I think we need a similar evaluation with the current squad. For most of last season I advocated moving Baines/Coleman into Midfield and playing more defensive fullbacks behind. Not to change how we played but I suppose to give us adequate protection to express ourselves. I think being more solid in wide areas would mean we defend less crosses and put less pressure on our centre halves to head balls away. Sometimes it's little changes that are not fashionable that allow people in your team to prosper.
For us to avoid slipping into a 94 style collapse we may need to re-evaluate the way we play, or at least the personnel to counter the managerial instincts.
