Balance and perspective or doom and gloom

Actually they did. On more than one occasion, even managed to hold on to a 3-2 win at the Britannia. The same season we beat them 3-1 at home too.

Martinez is a Carey for 2015. Just as Moyes had similarities to the PE teacher Buchan who preceded Carey.

And we all know what happened when Catterick added a bit of Pragmatism to Carey's football purism. What I have been calling 'The Goldilocks Option' for...well seems like ages now.

Not too much Moyes, not too much Martinez, but just right...Next though, is the hard part...WHO?

That was on April fools day 1961 and back then joke was on Carey in the famous Taxi.

54yrs on, we're being had for fools and it's now Uber not Taxi.

So that's a big 'Uber' from me.

On Monday against Stoke at 3 - 3 Martinez goes for the winner in the final minutes and we get beat. The calls on ToffeeWeb for him to go were loud and clear also following that.

It's make your mind up time as to which is the right approach.

I know that our defensive setup is all over the shop and this needs taking care of pronto. But I haven't seen that many sides better than us this season. It is a poor league, albeit an exciting one. A few tweaks here and there and we could still make progress, couldn't we?

School of science it currently may not be all over the pitch, but hey ho bring back Walter Smith and let's all sleep easy.

I agree this team has potential but the best group of players in the last 10 years? No, not at the moment. It appears to be a general view that the Moyes sides were dour, grinding out 1 0 wins and not very pretty on the eye. Well that may have been true in the early years as he was trying to rebuild a rotten club from top to bottom, however, in later years when we had a line up with Pienaar, Baines, Coleman, Jags, Lescott, Arteta, Cahill, Mirallas et al it could hardly be called boring and dour. We had entertaining football and we also had exciting football. We also had steel and a desire to win games. Before any of you think I am calling for Moyes back, well I'm not. He couldn't take it to the top 4 when it mattered especially away from home. But, how many of the current side would get into that side I have just mentioned? Definitely Lukaku and maybe a fit McCarthy. Anybody else? Not at the moment in my opinion.

Martinez plays pretty football at times, at other times we are just plain awful. I think when I read some posts about how entertaining we are I must be watching a different team. The media has hyped us up for being a very attractive football team with a few defensive deficiencies. Hmmm. Did anybody go to the City, United, RS, Spurs, Arsenal, Barnsley, Reading, Watford etc games? We were awful plain and simple. Its easy to look at games like Sunderland, Villa and say how great we are. They are 2 of the worst teams to visit GP in years. Stoke, as decent as they are, we should be beating these teams especially at GP. If you wish to compare Moyes and Martinez then look at the expectation levels. During the Moyes era, I expected us to beat anybody who came to GP and was rarely disappointed during the last 6 or 7 years of his reign.Fast forward to Martinez. I just hope we can beat somebody, anybody at GP. No expectation just hope. We have fallen a long way in my opinion and are believing all the media driven hype that we are being fed. We have lowered expectation to the point that 12 months on from last seasons disaster, we are no further forward and still we get the excuses that we are just unlucky, play brilliant exciting football, just need a bit of nous and we shall be there. Sorry I don't share the blinkered views. Truth is we bully the very poor teams but just can't cope with half decent ones. The frustrating thing is, we do have some decent players (and some very ordinary ones) who given proper coaching and team preparation, could be a half decent football team. Is/was Martinez the right man to take us forward? Not in my view. He has an awful record against the top half let alone the top 4. One decent result against United away when even WBA beat them does not constitute progress in my opinion.

Well we are having a good go, its not boring but yes let's show a bit of pragmatism when we have a lead. I think we have done the difficult part, developing a far younger attacking side from a very limited much older defensive side, just needs shoring up at the back. Crosses! New keeper or stick Robles in.

Are we prepared to accept the mistakes this year as long as we see youngsters developing? It's got to be better than wondering how long 30-something defenders can last as we have done over most of the last 20 years.

This team has the potential to be up there with them all, sadly at the moment our defending at times is schoolboy error stuff.

At the end of January if we are top six (yes I want number one as well, we have enjoyed it before) and still in two cups you might start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I hope so. Your loyalty is not in doubt, but those very lean times have certainly had an effect.

The title of this article is Balance & Perspective or Doom and Gloom. I'm in the first part What about you?

Martinez is only half a manager, good at some things but absolutely rank at others. Unfortunately we are looking like we'll end up mid table at best unless we can sort things out. Top six by the end of January? Have you seen our fixtures? I can see us beating no one until Swansea at the end of January. I would love to be wrong but on present form ....... I can even see Dagenham scoring against us even though I think we'll beat them.

How many off them could of been cut out, the penalties certainly and they are four points difference in the last two home games.

Blame Martinez? well you could do as the bucks stops with him. But I think the players involved (and referee with the last one) should also be held to account.

Let's hope we can toast with a glass of red each if lessons are learnt in 2016.

If so, that would be unfair in my opinion.
The article could quite easily be re-titled, 'delusional dreamers v objective realists'

We can only judge based on what has happened so far, not on what might happen.

We're 10th as a result of shipping goals. We're hardly any further on than at this point last season. We're 'learning lessons' and then when that assertion is immediately disproved, we need to be more 'mentally tough'. RM inherited a decent squad and has had funds to spend. In the league we have regressed, not progressed.

While skimming through the text of the OP it was all ifs, buts and maybes. We can talk about them until the cows come home. But at this point it appears to be yet another wasted season in our league history. How many more do we go on like this?

I don't think the club will sack him unless, God forbid, things get a lot worse. But treading water like this with the set-up inherited and the resources available points to shortcomings in the manager unless, of course, the powers that be feel that this is where we belong as a club.

Bollocks to that. Many of us were glad to see the back of the last bloke due to limited ambitions. Now mid table is acceptable to some because they have 'balance and perspective'.

So who would I prefer? It's not my call and I have no idea. I would not have appointed RM. I hope I am wrong but, based on what my eyes and ears tell me, I really don't think he's the right man.

And , thank you, I'll have a large one. Very generous of you.

So let us be objective and put things in perspective. During RM's first season he won 21 games and lost 8, second season he won 12 and lost fifteen, so far this season he has won 6 and lost 5. Over the season we have had some good luck and some bad luck, some fortuitous decisions and some bad decisions. If the first half of the season is indicative of the second half we will finish on 52 points, last season that would have been 10th place the season before 9th.

So at the moment we aren't in immediate danger of relegation, nor are we likely to challenge the upper echelons of the league. What of the future then?

Is Martinez likely to change his attitude towards set pieces? He is soon to enter his seventh year as a Premier League manager and he hasn't changed yet so I would suspect not.

The same answer could of course be given to questions relating to tactics, favourites and defending so I won't waste time going through them. This means that, on balance we can expect to finish around the 8-12 position unless things change. Which of course brings us to the question of what will change if not the manager? The only possible answer is, of course, the players.

Will the likes of Rom, Ross and Del be happy sticking around a mid table team? No.

Will we be able to replace them with players of equal talent if we are a mid table team? Unlikely

Will we score as many goals with lesser players in their positions, for example Kone, Cleverly and McGeady? Again unlikely.

Is defensive performance of the team likely to improve without the addition of solid, non-footballing centre halves, like Shawcross? Unlikely.

Has Martinez ever signed a non-footballing centre half? I don't think so.

How much difference will a new goalkeeper actually make? That's actually a tricky one. On the errors front Howard is a disaster so a new keeper will hopefully make less mistakes, (he isn't the worst in the premier league by the way, that accolade goes to our beloved neighbours Simon Mignolet). But, on the number of saves made this season Howard is third in the Premier League. Nobody has made more saves than him from shots in the six yard box, only 4 have made more in the penalty box and 2 have made more saves from shots outside the penalty area. In addition to this he tenth on the number saves made to goals conceded ratio. So will the new goalkeeper be able to reduce the number of mistakes and still produce enough saves to make a difference, or will the poor defending mean that anyone taking over from Tim still concede far too many goals? I hate to say it but probably.

If we score less and still concede as many will we still finish mid table? No

How many Evertonians will be happy with a run of mid table finishes? Considering the reaction to a run of 6-8th place finishes under Moyes I suspect not many.

Finally, if Martinez doesn't change his attitude and the players behave in the way that players do how long will it take for Everton to be involved in a relegation fight, a la Villa, Newcastle and Sunderland?

About Everton...remember?

No?

Er...well I definitely did and now, 4 (6? 9? 13?) years down the line, it seems I was right.

I bet some of you are feeling pretty stupid right now.

I just hope you have the good grace to accept that you know nothing about football, Everton and/or life and will now accept me as a sort of all-seeing, mystical, Everton oracle-type figure.

You can refer to me from now on as 'I-Told-You-So The Magnificent'

A lot of other people have already raised this on multiple threads and this is the bottom line.

Top managers are able to get the balance right and the last season and a half have proved that that Martinez can't do that at Everton. I'm not even including his previous clubs in this assessment.

Bottom line is he won't go unless we start sliding further down the league and things become precarious and we are likely stuck with him while the supposed buyout discussions are taking place.

Credit Martinez for assembling what should be a really exciting squad, but a mid-table finish due our obvious defensive frailties is likely to see a number of the young stars moving on.

I for one can't see him turning that aspect around because he hasn't got it in his footballing DNA.

The expression of shutting up shop, or parking the bus brings up visions of every player behind the ball allowing the opposition to come forward. But with our defense that type of play is never going to work.
I have stated on here before, and so has some of his supporters, that one of Martinez,s failings is to manage the game from the touchline and his inability or reluctance to the use of his substitutes..
Monday was a prime example when after our third goal was scored the majority in the crowd thought than an extra defender should have been brought on to strengthen the midfield with the one forward left up, and with the form Lukaku was in they would have had to leave a couple of defenders to mark him
But no this never happened and Martinez stuck to his vision, and this type of thinking shows a distinctly amateur style of thinking that has no place in a professional club. This man will not change no matter how long or how many opportunities he is given.

The conversations taking place now on T.W. are not much different from march last season, the start of this season and today. We are aware that B.K. will not fire him as he still repeats the phrase of when he hired him, of you only have to spend 5 min,s in a room with this man to now this is the right man for Everton. they may not be the exact words but they were on that line. .

I hope the takeover rumours are true as we need real leadership at the club people with ambition who will make the tough decisions required.

Blue Bill sat dreaming about the boys pen and with not a penny of his own money at stake is stagnating this once great club.

We've missed Jagielka - but otherwise the management team have to take some responsibility.

The glass half-full sees a good team and a hat full of 'almost' points that would have us where we want to be.

The glass half-empty sees no progress in defensive issues or the position in the table, followed by a much tougher run of fixtures which could see us fall much further.

Martinez will have this season regardless so I don't personally see much point in wrangling with the idea of sacking him - unless somebody much better becomes available. He himself has picked out defense and game management as an issue - time will see whether he has the know-how to fix it.

I sympathise with the writers assertion that a Moyes team would't have scored 3 against that particular Stoke side - even if they did against previous Stoke sides.

This site will always err on the side of gloom if we aren't winning - frustration.

An 'objective realist' should be able to see the positives in a situation too and it seems pretty realistic to suggest that Martinez has helped put together a decent attacking side, hold on to a number of good players and shows a keen interest in the Academy and what it can do for our future. This association of Everton with exciting attacking football is also a positive from his regime.

His negatives are well rehearsed on here and I agree that they are negatives, so I won't bother.

If you want to understand the 'deludes' then consider that we are nervous about 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'. We could have just as easily ended up with Lennon, McClaren, Allardyce, Monk or Benitez flushing us down the toilet. Koeman, Mourinho and Garde have also had seasons to forget so far.

Of course for much of the last 50 years, this is how it has been. Even the Sir John Moores' reign had more bad seasons than good ones and, in terms of league placements, BK's appointed managers have been an improvement on most we've had.

But whichever end of the spectrum we choose to adopt, we can do nowt about it apart from venting our frustration via ToffeeWeb.

Whether your glass is half-full or half-empty, here are the objective facts as I posted above:

We're 11th as a result of shipping goals. RM inherited a decent squad and has had funds to spend. In the league we have regressed, not progressed.

I'm not sure if there's any part of that you would disagree with?

And I do see the positives i.e decent attacking football as you put it.
Yes we are good going forward, we've held on to decent players and so on as you highlight.

But for all of that, results are more important than performances - we've won 6 out of 19 games and the fact of the matter is we're 11th ......

Regarding your fear of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater', that assumes a huge amount of faith in the manager as though he is 'the one'.

To continue the watery theme, if nice attacking football and 11th floats your boat then good for you. But I'm less impressed given the talent available to him, the funds he's been allocated and the solid foundation he inherited.

Am I 'erring on the side of gloom' because we're not winning as you put it? Yes and no. YES because because with the players at his disposal, it should be easier to win than lose, especially from a winning position at home with less than a quarter of the game to go. NO - because I am not gloomy, I'm just an objective realist, pointing out the facts.

Of course, it could all turnaround. Let's hope so.
That's the one point we can agree on.
(Oh and the second is that he won't get sacked any time soon so don't worry about the 'low bar' names of other potential managers you cited which I thought was a bit gloomy to be fair.)

Gloom: we could get relegated even with this squad, he’s that bad. If not this season, then the one after.

I remember us holding a lead at Man City and Tim Cahill was chasing, barking orders and getting every last bit of effort out of the team. Who's our pain in the arse who just refuses to lose? I really don't think we have one.

A bit of backbone and organisation would help this talented side.

Would be typical of the way the PL has gone this season for us to beat them.

Weirdest season ever

We've thrown away more points than any other team and we should be higher up the league

I know who i'm pointing my finger at but let's just get 3 points tomorrow and I can put my finger away for a while !

Of course we have a better team now, but that’s the point: last year was a big disappointment, this here is a catastrophe.