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To a time we could pass the football:
Why sacking Roberto Martinez could be a mistake for Everton
Richard Jolly
11/03/2016 at 14:44Updated 11/03/2016 at 15:44
Roberto Martinez's flaws are no secret, writes Richard Jolly, but Everton would be taking a big risk if they chose to try and find an upgrade on their current manager.
“It was the second time I’d been done by new owners coming in,” wrote Sam Allardyce, with typical bluntness. Getting “done”, or sacked, was a recurring theme when the club he managed was taken over. First
Newcastle, then
Blackburn. A new broom wanted a new face, even if that face belonged to
Steve Kean. To judge by the tone of Allardyce’s recent autobiography, that still stings. Rightly so, too.
It is not in Roberto Martinez’s nature to project any fears he may harbour of suffering a similar fate. When the British-Iranian businessman Farhad Moshiri bought a 49.9 percent stake in Everton, Martinez declared him the “perfect person” to take Everton to the next level and started talking about his aim of Champions League qualification. Martinez may voice the ambition new owners tend to require. His ever growing band of critics wonder if he has the realism and the results they also need.
The smiling Spaniard is a voice of innate optimism, to the extent that he could spend three-quarters of a season in the relegation zone with
Wigan while giving the impression he had never looked at the league table. Martinez can ignore the context and the soundtrack. It is increasingly hard for others to do otherwise. More of the Everton manager’s decisions are booed at Goodison Park. Sometimes frustration is also expressed with his players who are deemed to benefit from his patronage, whether
Tim Howard, John Stones,
Ross Barkley or Arouna Kone.
Everton manager Roberto Martinez with Gerard Deulofeu as he is substitutedReuters
After eight consecutive top-eight finishes, Everton are on course for a second successive bottom-half berth. Their season could effectively be over
if Chelsea eliminate them from the FA Cup on Saturday. Everton have a strange addiction to 3-3 draws and 3-2 defeats, an inability to hold on to leads and an enduring capacity to concede from crosses and set-pieces. The adjective Martinez applied to their weekend loss to West Ham, infuriating, is starting to apply to his regime as a whole. Even his peers have abandoned the managerial creed of omerta to suggest he is failing. “I think they have got a top-five squad,” said
Tony Pulis after
West Bromwich Albion won at Goodison Park. “On paper, their team is one of the best in England,” stated
Slaven Bilic after West Ham emulated them.
Case closed, then. Everton need a change at the helm to realise their considerable potential. Moshiri can make his mark by appointing a manager with a grasp of the defensive basics. Martinez’s flaws are too pronounced for him to have much cause for complaint.
Except that Everton may be best served by keeping the Spaniard, and not merely because his team of 2013-14, who accumulated 72 points in an adventurous fashion, was their best in almost three decades. Nor is it purely because of their appeal to neutrals, who can prize style over substance in a way that is understandably irritating to Evertonians.
It is because the situation is not as simple as it seems. It is no easy task to just strip away the faulty parts of Martinez’s self-destructive side and bolt on a bit more solidity. It is because, while Everton were indelibly associated with
David Moyes during his 11-year reign, they have now become a quintessential Martinez team. Their failings are his but so are their successes. For better and worse, he has transformed the identity of a club.
The fact that they have the ‘Fab Four’ of Stones, Barkley,
Gerard Deulofeu and
Romelu Lukaku, who can be conservatively valued at £150 million between them, owes much to him. He only signed the Spaniard and the Belgian but all four have reached new levels under Martinez.
Before his appointment, Barkley had only started four top-flight games. Stones had not appeared in any. A more cautious manager – Moyes, say – would have waited longer to trust either. Nor would he have purchased the maverick Deulofeu. He may not have played the brand of football that permitted Lukaku to be so prolific.
James McCarthy has gone from a rookie recruited from Hamilton Academical to one of the Premier League’s most accomplished midfielders under Martinez’s tutelage. Muhamed Besic has offered hints that he could kick on in a similar manner. Brendan Galloway showed rich promise in his early-season outings. Having inherited an ageing group, Martinez has switched the emphasis to a younger generation. He belongs to the brand of evangelistic salesmen forever promising a brighter tomorrow; the paradoxical risk is that the future is worse without him.
Because Everton’s squad have a peculiarly Martinez-esque quality. They have become so idiosyncratic that possible successors may discover it becomes a sizeable rebuilding job. Certainly it is easy to envisage others, whether
Gareth Barry,
Tom Cleverley,
Joel Robles or Kone, being deemed unsuitable by another manager.
Roberto Martinez, Everton managerPA Photos
The past provides a pertinent precedent. Wigan floundered after Martinez left and not merely because he raided them for four players, or because relegation prompted others to leave. Replacing Martinez poses problems.
Retaining him requires strength, given the pressure Moshiri could come under to dismiss him. It needs a firm instruction to recruit a defensive coach and spend time training the rearguard to repel set-pieces. Yet it also necessitates a memory of the club’s past, something new owners often lack.
Everton have a wretched record against the top eight this season, but Martinez has a history of defeating elite opposition. Two of his substitutions backfired last week, but he has made many a catalytic change in the past. He has shown tactical acumen to accompany his capacity to make players better. He has played with the aesthetic appeal Allardyce’s sides often lack and which can exert an appeal to those dreaming of a brave new world. He has taken Everton to their best points total since 1987 and their lowest in a decade. A focus on the here and now means the latter occupies the attention more and there is a case for a more pragmatic replacement who produces more consistency, but Martinez merits another season to try and touch the heights again.
He may be Allardyce’s opposite in many ways but while the last club to sack the veteran, West Ham, have accelerated towards the Champions League in a manner Everton want to emulate, the previous two were left to rue the rashness of newcomers to the boardroom.
