Wouldn’t say it was down to one thing in particular, the lack of finances over the years has obviously held the club back and now were trying to catch up.
Martinez’s success in his first season was influenced by the defensive unit
Moyes left behind. Martinez added flair and a new attacking dimension to the side and it worked, the more influence Martinez had over the side though the worse it got, his lack of focus of the defensive part of the game, fitness and set pieces was naive and it caught up with us during his second season. His team became to open and ‘fluid’ and we became far too easy to play against.
Koeman came in and brought back the defensive solidarity, but did nothing more than you’d expect. He finished 7th (what you’d probably expect of us) & picked up points were you’d expect at home.
The recruitment of players hasn’t been great and we’ve failed to strengthen in key areas when it’s been necessary (Coleman, Jagielka & Baines were all part of
Moyes back 4 in his final season; they’re all still probably part of our strongest back 4, Not signing a goalkeeper last season and a forward this season), which has led to the squad being weak in key arrears and looking unbalanced.
This season we’ve signed a fair few first team players, think we’ve used 36 this season which is the joint most in our history, these players will obviously take time to settle and it can’t be easy to whilst our forms poor and were replacing managers every 3 months.
The loss of Lukaku (and the lack of a replacement) has had a big impact, look at Liverpool and Spurs when they sold Suarez and Bale, both spent the money on a couple of signings rather than a direct replacement and both clubs seemed to go backwards the season after whilst the new players settled.
We’re in transition at the moment and probably won’t see the best of this Everton side until next season.
