I find this argument about Martinez's qualities as a manager a little difficult to understand.
As I see it,
Moyes left a solid team that I felt achieved finishes that reflected the quality of the squad but over-achieved in terms of the budget he had at his disposal. We were hard to beat due to a solid back four well drilled in all aspects of defending. I always felt comfortable that we had a good chance of not being beaten unless we were playing one of the top 5. We finally started playing good football in his last 2 seasons mainly through Baines and Pienaar's telepathic understanding. Sadly this never really materialised against the bigger teams probably due to
Moyes' mentality against those sides.
I was happy overall with where he left us and I think he was due the respect he received on his final game. He really did stabilise us as a club because we were going nowhere before he came onboard. Unfortunately his comments when pursuing both Baines and Fellaini soured that relationship and rightly so as it was disrespectful.
When Martinez was announced I confess to being underwhelmed and so too with the players he brought with him from Wigan. As the first season progressed I think it is fair to say that we all warmed to him. Initially we were all a little bit frustrated with his insistence on maintaining possession, particularly when he had us taking free kicks short when we could put it in the box. However, we started to see results and better still, we started to see wins that we were unaccustomed to, wins against Arsenal and Utd etc. His first season was an undoubted success. Only a fool could argue otherwise.
Unfortunately for Martinez, hindsight can be a cruel mistress but it does allow one to revisit his achievements with a clearer perspective. 72 points is not to be sniffed at, in fact it was a magnificent achievement that would have normally secured a 4th place finish. I guess it's just our luck that it didn't.
At the time I put all that success down to Martinez's impact and the removal of the negative tactics against the bigger boys. Now I'm not so sure. Moyes left a team that had been steadily improving, was tight knit and had been together for several years. It also had a shelf life of another 2 years before an overhaul was needed. What Martinez did was to swap Fellaini for McCarthy which gave us some much needed energy in the middle of the park, and added a goalscorer in the form of Lukaku. It is the added goals from Lukaku that in my opinion helped us move on that year. Had Moyes had that goal scoring threat at his disposal, I think he could have achieved the same points.
That said, this is by no means a given. I always thought that Moyes had the defensive side of the game down to a tee, he also showed that he could get the team playing nice stuff, but I always thought that he had an uncanny ability to destroy a striker. I base this on the change in effectiveness of both Yakubu and Jelavic. Both were productive when they first arrived and had been at their previous clubs. However, once Moyes had his hands on them for a while that all changed. They became an outlet spending most of their time running the channels rather than getting in the box where they could hurt the opposition. There is nothing to suggest that this would have been the case with Lukaku but there is also nothing to say that he would have got as much out of him as Martinez did.
I certainly appreciate having a high scoring striker in our team and I think that this is Martinez's main achievement at the club, as I would question whether Moyes would have gone for him or have been able to a) convince him to sign for us permanently or b) justify the price tag to himself.
Unfortunately for Martinez his next 2 seasons were dismal. He had spoken openly that he believed practicing defending set pieces was a waste of time. The evidence on the pitch suggested otherwise. His results in his first season had convinced the players to buy into his methods fully and as a result, all they had learned from Moyes was forgotten.
Results started to go against him, usually due to the new found ability to defend badly. As the frequency of these results increased, so did the fans impatience and lack of confidence in the team. Goodison always responds to what is shown on the pitch. If we're putting in a shift the crowd do the same, if we look nervous you can hear and feel it in the stands (see last Saturday's game against Bournemouth). Eventually the pendulum swung so much that you could see that the players feared playing at home.
Martinez refusal to change only compounded this. For 18 months the team played with fear. Players were boo'd for passing backwards in order to fulfill Martinez's insistence on possession football, the crowd moaned when players stood off the opposition when it was obvious that Martinez wanted the team to cut out the oppositions options rather than press. Fortunately teams in Europe gave us the space to use his tactics effectively enough to have a decent European adventure. This I believe bought him more time and until that dreadful performance that saw us knocked out I fully enjoyed those nights.
For his sake he should have been relieved of control sooner. He was a nice guy and for a while his positivity was a breath of fresh air. He lost the crowd though and there was a long period where it was obvious that the honeymoon was well and truly over. His refusal to provide post match analysis that reflected what the fans had witnessed only served to add fuel to the fire because it painted the picture that nothing was being done to address the decline in performances.
At the end of the day though the decision to let him go was correct and probably worth the money. He did a job when it could be argued that there weren't too many options around at that time. It could also be argued that despite us finishing 15 2 seasons in a row he left us as a more attractive proposition to potential managers. We had transitioned from a team seen as over performing with no real star players to a team clearly under performing with some extremely talented youngsters in Stones, Barkley and Lukaku. Admittedly the latter 2 were here with Moyes but it was Martinez that established them. What half decent manager wouldn't fancy their chances of being able to improve on 15th as opposed to replacing Moyes with what he left.
For me, in hindsight I will remember Martinez for allowing Barkley and Stones to at the very least become established first team era as I'm not confident that Moyes would have risked that. But most of all I will remember him for being vital in the acquisition of Lukaku. He put all his eggs in one basket and it may have provided the basis for us breaking into the top 4. In hindsight of my hindsight that could all change if we lose Lukaku in the summer as I would put the loss of him down to the team progressing too slowly due to those two poor seasons.
