Ok, let's start from the back and move forward...
Keeper:
Martinez signed Joel who was criticised early on for lacking confidence and for coming from Wigan. Incidentally, my biggest criticism of Martinez was the time it took him to make that change, as Howard had been diminishing for the last few years of Moyes time.
Defence:
Its easy to blame Martinez again for this, but again, it was a defence he inherited from Moyes, and 1 which had its best years behind it. For all the Criticism Martinez gets for the state of the squad he left, he had 1 hell of a building job to do when he took over, with Moyes team reaching the end of another cycle, and we all know Martinez was brought in to manage the team on a budget, much like Moyes had, and all prior to Moshiri taking over.
He gets none of the credit for the team performances in year 1, because it was built on Moyes defence, but he's never excused for the eventual decline of said defence after that, even though, Alcaraz and Mori aside, it was still by and large a Moyes defence, who apparently forgot how to defend because Martinez hypnotised them all.
Fitness:
I won't have it that the every single 1 of the players were so unfit under Martinez that it took an entire preseason and 6 months of the current season to undo all that bad work. All players reset in the summer and rebuild again from July onwards. The fitness or lack of, in the back end of Martinez era was as much a symptom of a lack of confidence and an apparent lack of effort from the players who he fallen foul of near the end. Barry implied as much in his interview. Now if you are talking about intensity, that's a different story, and a matter of tactics and conditioning for a different style of play.
Set Pieces:
It always makes me laugh at the thought that Martinez didn't practice any set pieces, but not as much as the thought that professional players who had practiced them for rest of their entire careers suddenly forgot how to do it in less than the space of 1 year. I suppose these players, like Rooney and Ronaldo who stay behind for hours after training to practice taking free kicks would've been brought to task by Evil Bobby as well,had they had the misfortune of playing under his dictatorship.
Midfield:
Our midfield has improved because we have signed 3/4 quality midfielders with our improved budget, instead of signing the likes of Naismith, Cleverley, McGeady, Gibson, Barry, Deulofeu, Besic etc for a combined total of about the price we signed Lookman for. Add to that the gradual emergence of our golden generation, who I'm convinced Martinez was looking to introduce as soon as they were ready.
Attack:
Rom is still scoring our goals.
Team Spirit:
There was an obvious falling out and the team suffered massively for it. Poor run of results, lack of confidence and form and a fan base who love to hound out anyone for failing their expectations, is a toxic mix.
Martinez didn't help himself with his relentless positivity, his loyalty to players who clearly weren't as loyal to him in return, and a stubbornness in continuing down a path that was failing him.
But he's not our manager any more. Leave him alone and stop comparing every decent result against 1 of his poor ones. It helps noone.
P. S. Last year we battered Stoke away. Just saying.
