Roberto's Rules

, 21 August, 0comments  |  Jump to most recent
An analysis of Everton's change in approach
It may still be very early days but it appears as though Roberto Martinez's influence is already taking hold at Goodison Park. Over at Sky Sports, Alex Dunn looks at the Spaniard's first game in charge and is surprised with just how different Everton were in their approach.
A trip to Norfolk to play free-spending Norwich then was always likely to be one of the opening day's more intriguing sub-plots. And so it proved.

"I think you need to have wider options and I think the squad is ready to be pushed and to be in a position where we can be flexible and do different things," said the Spaniard in the game's build-up.

"It is not changing everything in the way we play. We are not losing anything, but trying to add. I don't want to be a team that can only play in one way and to do that you need to experiment.

"This is about making ourselves a bit more expansive in terms of how we play and that is going to be a real strength for us."

That Everton dominated possession at Carrow Road has been well documented but was this representative of an overhaul of his predecessor's key philosophies or rather a more subtle tinkering job? It is of course a somewhat arbitrary, if not knee-jerk, task to attempt to extrapolate telling conclusions from a single game and yet such were the differences from previous seasons it would be equally remiss not to at least highlight them.

In terms of personnel Martinez resisted the temptation to field any of his new signings and instead appeared to set-up an Everton XI that was more Moyes-like than a thousand-yard stare on receipt of a journalist's impertinent question. The graphic below shows the side picked by Martinez on Saturday, alongside that selected by Moyes in the corresponding fixture last season on February 23. Talk of apeing Wigan's 3-4-2-1 formation proved redundant as Martinez elected to stick with Everton's tried and tested back four, with Nikica Jelavic operating as a lone front man.

Read the full article at the link below.

Quotes or other material sourced from Sky Sports News





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