Martinez rues weak second half against Arsenal

The question is why?

We should have really been the fitter team towards the end of that game yesterday given Arsenal having a tough Champions League match in Turkey.

If we were looking tired then why wait so long to bring on the athletic Atsu and the "run all day" energetic Mohamed Besic?

Strange.

This would have been nice:

"So when we took the field for the second half, there was a real spring in our step after, like last week, we scored with almost the last kick of the 1st half. We started quite comfortably I though and there was no real pressure from our opponents who did not get a shot on target until the final third of the match.

"That all said, it was clear that some players were starting to struggle at around this time and it’s clear to me now that that was the time when I should have made changes. I brought on Osman on early – and we are taking reports on the extent of Steven’s injury and I’m sure I’ll have some very clear news for you on that score in a day or two to leave you all in no doubt where we stand with injuries – and in hindsight that was a mistake, I should have brought Besic on.

"But, as we all know, Leon is good for 60 minutes at best these days and I should have brought him off with 20 or so to go to bring on a fresh pair of legs, again Besic would have been the right choice I now see.

"If I had known that McGeady would have had such little impact on the game, I would have brought Atsu on instead to give him a longer run. But in the blink of an eye it was 2-1 and I cannot fault my defence for the goal.

"I now see that this was the time to bring on Besic to close things down and Gareth and James looked like they needed more support as Arsenal were now looking very dangerous. But instead I brought on Atsu.

"That might look strange now as essentially our game now consisted of holding back inviting Arsenal to bring the game to us. And then, unfairly in my view, Arsenal leveled at 2-2. Again, no blame can be apportioned to any one of our defenders for this goal. A misplaced cross led to our downfall.

"In sum, IÂ’m very happy with the way we played and special credit goes to the central defenders and Leon who never stopped running did he. Like all other teams at this point in the season, we are not yet 100% match-fit and I cannot think of any other team who keeps going up until the final whistle at this early juncture who might, for example, score 2 goals in the last 7 minutes.

"But I put my hands up in air. I made mistakes. I apologize to the great Everton family and this club with its glorious sense of the past and tradition and culture that I have studied. I made mistakes. I made subs too late. I made the wrong subs.

"I should not have bought Leon on. The key thing now is to build around the successes of these last two games and take the positives like the central defence pairing and learn from our mistakes moving forwards."

Whatever the reason, there is no excuse for not being ready at the start of a season to fight for 90 minutes physically and mentally. Every second of every minute is there to fight for and to win. That is the only way to beat the best and to be the best, because nothing but the best is good enough. Simple as.

Struth, Roberto, who ya trying to convince? In parts, very good, certainly. As Dan says, lesson not learnt from last week. See me after School, Roberto.

Well I guess that's one way of looking at it. The other way is that we played decent in the first half and they were shite. Also, our second goal was lucky as the ref could have blown for a foul on Mertesacker by Rom or Naismith being offside.

For the last 30 mins, we were shite. The energy may have gone after 75 mins but we were already panicking at the back after 60 mins.

If that's 'phenomenal' in his eyes, i'd hate to see what 'okay' is — and am really scared to see what crap is!

Improving fitness levels will be easy. Adding another striker to the squad is as important.

Roberto's superlatives after every performance are wearing thin with me — does he think the fans are thick morons describing yesterday as 'phenomenal'? The fans leaving the ground at the end were in uproar at that second-half performance, his choice of subs was disastrous and the fact we don't have a back-up striker is diabolical.

Still a point ahead of the Mancs and one behind the RS tonight (and hopefully still that way tomorrow night).

Top 4 is on! (The anti-depressants are definitely kicking in.)

My worry is that, in both our games this season, we have tired badly; now, seeing as we had most possession in both games, that usually means the team doing the chasing get tired first.

After 70 minutes yesterday, we just kept getting deeper and deeper to such an extent that we allowed Arsenal to get the ball into our half unchallenged. Despite them not playing well, this sort of tactic played right into their hands.

There were times deep into the second half were our players were receiving the ball 20 yards inside the Arsenal half and their first thought was pass it 30 yards backwards to Jags or Distin; why not go forward and try and kill the game off?

I know it's early days and we will get fitter, but I just hope we play more positively when we are in front in games. I thought RM's comments about 2-0 being a dangerous score was a crazy thing to say. So the next time we are 2-0 up are players will be even more paranoid thinking careful we might end up losing here as RM reckons this is a dangerous score.

(To be fair, it may be a non-native language thing combined with the psychology. There are worse things in the world. I don't think he's trying to kid anybody.)

Giroud surprised me as to his size and physical presence; he always appeared to be a bit lightweight to me on previous occasions. Oxlade-Chamberlain was so anonymous during the match that I only realised he was on the pitch when he was subbed.

Please... these are professional athletes paid thousands a week — and they tire after 70 minutes of playing football?!? That is a sad indictment of the whole of football today.

I've just realised that early September sees the start of another crappy and annoying international campaign with interruption to normal service.

England should remove the red colour from the flag for the footy team and surrender immediately. It's enough to make anyone swear. Bollocks.

You're right. The Ox had a quiet game.

Ahem, you mean blatantly pulling Distin's shirt?

Don't get me wrong, it doesn't excuse the result, the second-half drop-off or, come to that, the inevitability of their equaliser, but let's not pretend that was an entirely fair duel.

Fitness my backside. We've been chucking away leads for years and while we have "Mr Panic" Jags at the back it will continue. He's not tall enough, strong enough or fast enough. Oh for a young Distin... It also doesn't help to put clapped-out wingers like McGeady on when we need to run down the game.

Poor defending and poor substitutions cost us that win.

I agree with Frank, poor substitutions. Is substituting like for like players to chase another goal relevant when we're not getting the same break into their territory? And I believe Besic could have come on earlier way before the first goal to stem the problem.

Then again, I like to think positive. Last year we drew the first 3 games against crappy opponents (sure, Leicester should be considered mid table at best but who knows). Let's hope that we shake off the start of the season jitters quickly.

If he doesn't get things sorted soon, we shall do 'phenominally' well to challenge for top third.

But, first off, this fitness malarkey! Our opinion is subjective, they have all these fitness gizmos at Finch Farm so you're not telling me that RM didn't know in the last 6 weeks or whatever what the players' fitness was like and increased training sufficiently if he wanted to.

We have a long old season to come in the Prem. along with the Europa and the other Cup comps. with a squad that's a bit shallow in quality, with injuries beginning to raise their ugly heads already; would the players last the season if they were 100% from the off?

Then you have the question of pacing yourself; if you put everything early into a match or any sporting event for that matter, you're going to suffer towards the finish, which was what happened to some degree yesterday as Arsenal changed some key players and went all out to score.

Then there's substitutions: Roberto didn't make many mistakes last season, quite the opposite. Forced sub: Osman for Pienaar, obviously not what Martinez wanted but we played well for 60-70 mins till Arsenal started to press in search of a lifeline.

Besic not getting on the field. There could be reasons we are not aware of that happen in private, he has been in trouble before with teams and managers. Could be he's carrying a slight knock, personal problems etc, why still have him on the subs bench, you could say, but maybe RM thought he was worth the risk as the last resort. Who knows, it's all speculation.

Kevin said earlier, god knows what it's going to be like on here if/when we lose a few matches. Let's give them some credit for being 2-0 up against a top team like Arsenal and leading twice away at Leicester instead of slagging the manager and some players off already.

Nothing wrong with criticism, but there's always two sides to every story. Also we could say if there has indeed been mistakes made, to use the in turn, it's a learning curve!

What could Roberto do with another 㿔m? That would make him instantly a 'better manager' – the better the players, the easier his job will be!

As for Jagielka, I commented before the start of the World Cup heÂ’s an accident waiting to happen and nothing IÂ’ve seen since wonÂ’t alter that view. That was schoolboy defending for the equaliser, and as for his distribution, well letÂ’s not go there. HeÂ’s dragging the excellent Distin down with him game by game.

If this goes on, we are going to be having to score 3 or 4 to win games and thatÂ’s not going to happen. If Martinez had any balls heÂ’d bench Jagielka against Chelsea and bring Stones in a far far better defender and a far better user of the ball but I donÂ’t think for one minute he will though. Funny though... Chelsea donÂ’t frighten me at all, and I think we ll get our first win; but one things for certain: them schoolboy errors have to be eradicated.

I'm hoping this is on of those "start of the season jitters". The 2 goals we conceded are criminal by our past few seasons' defensive record. The commentator even mentioned the first Arsenal goal to be at walking pace.

He did mark Messi well but I'm sure he raised his game as often more limited players can in one-off games! He did also lose him for Argentina's winning goal, I believe?

I donÂ’t think a playerÂ’s ability to perform effectively in the Premier League can be fairly and squarely evaluated on how well he did marking Messi.

When a team can't defend properly, the anxiety levels on and off the pitch bring the whole performance down. You can't be gung-ho or cavalier in this league, where nearly every mistake gets punished.

In Italy, you would not see top Serie A sides suffering the same embarrassment of drawing games in winning positions in the last 15 minutes. They would just shut the opposition out, by packing their defenses.

People should hold their horses on Besic, IÂ’m hearing heÂ’s the answer to everything yet IÂ’ve never seen him play a Premier League game

He mentions our fitness levels yet his swanning around in Brazil when pre-season arrangements were being made could not have helped.

He says that Osman is not strong enough and can only last for two thirds of a game, well I never!

On looking at the highlights a couple of times, I could sense that Roberto is a little like me - i.e. laid back most of the times, but with a real aggressive desire to win deep inside. I could literally feel the anger as the cameras panned to his face after Giroud's second goal celebrations. It wasn't quite the ginger death stare but he was absolutely livid.

Here's what I think actually happened. That Pienaar injury threw a spanner in the works, he never really intended to play Leon for more than 15-20 minutes (if at all). But he always meant to replace Kevin and Lukaku (who are both coming off injuries and the World Cup). The Pienaar sub meant that all of a sudden he was one sub short with two already planned for second half. But who?

Second half starts and we hold our own till the 70th odd minute when Wenger plays his last cards and brings Cazorla and Campbell. Roberto goes for Atsu and McGeady – remember, he made a defensive sub last week which led to the goal (for which he was also criticized). This week he tries to keep attacking and keeping the defensive setup the same hoping not to cause any disruptions the way they did last week. He wasn't counting on individual errors like that Jagielka's jump (and he's definitely not going to publicly single the team captain out post match).

He was perhaps also hoping for a Deulofeu-like impact from Atsu, but Atsu seems not as scary / flamboyant an individual ball runner as Del Boy. I think the Atsu sub would have happened regardless of the game situation, since he wont get any game time next week and Roberto wanted to integrate him quickly.

Roberto pointed out post match: "We ran out of energy". This is Martinez being actually very critical by his usual standards. He's literally yelling at the boys to get fitter and to shape up. That he didn't go for Besic and went for McGeady was probably a mistake, but he can't substitute 11 people after 70 minutes for fatigue. It's not unfair on his part to expect the spine of the team (ie, the defenders and the defensive midfielders) to be able to play a full 90.

McCarthy, Barry, Coleman and Distin didn't go to the World Cup. Baines and Jags returned quite early. There are no excuses for any of them to be exhausted the way they were in the second game of the season. And Bobby pretty much acknowledged it, in his usually diplomatic way quite publicly.

It's fair to criticize the physical conditioning pre season and the lack of match fitness. Last year, Martinez was applauded for not applying dinosaur 'run up the hill' fitness methods to the team. He was also applauded for making game-changing attacking subs. Now he's being criticised for it – after a couple of games where, for the large parts, we owned the other team.

But it's not a sprint; it's a marathon... and his methods have proved to work in the longer run last season.

We'll see where we stand when Chelsea visit next week. Oh and BTW, expect to see some unexpected activity on transfer deadline day!

As always, the next game is the most important one; Chelsea will be a wee bit scared of how much Everton controlled Arsenal, and thatÂ’s a positive.

I don't think RM knows how to defend and that's his problem. Just look at Wigan; when they went down, 76 goals they had against them. That's were "lovely to watch" attacking football got them under RM.

Jags has been a good servant but needs dropping and even Distin was shite. Did you see how many blue shirts were in the box when that cross came over and soft bollocks mis-timed his jump? And they still couldn't stop the goal. Tired legs... makes you laugh, don't it.

It's pretty basic: close up shop, especially when you've watched Arsenal score a last-minute goal the week before.

Can Lukaku play against Chelsea or was it only when he was on loan that he couldn't?

He best play regardless of his sore toe, and he best do some damage to them on Saturday and show Mourinho it was a mistake to sell him.

The inability to close out was what cost Wigan their Prem place. Ironically the sensibilities of OFM - defensive substitutions, a focus on defensive organisation of the team and an emphasis on fitness - are exactly what was required on Saturday, and what was missing. I would actually say lack of fitness is a criminal state since that is the requirement of every single team as a minimum.

If not halfway, could not RM meet DM a little bit closer??

Our team's failure 'to last the distance' in the two opening matches is an entirely different matter caused by the man's obsession with the World Cup - both his own involvement and that of his players. Sending an undercooked team into action may well cost us dear.

RM doesnÂ’t know how to defend?

I donÂ’t think thatÂ’s a fair statement. Have a look at amount goals conceded last season

If so, expect an announcement of a mystery injury to the striker later in the week !

If the league was made from 60 min games we would be higher up the league, sadly it isn't and our lack of fitness and ageing squad is losing us points and a final league placing, god only knows what we have waiting in Europa, if we carry on as we have done it's another early televised hosing.

Sadly at a club like Everton (the 2014 version) we seem to get the best out of people when they are hungry and eager to prove....the moment we seem to adopt them, be it via a contract or adulation, the focus seems to disappear. A kick up the pants will do Martinez no harm.

The defending has been poor. We look as if we will concede in every game we play whenever the oppo apply any pressure. I don't think Stones will necessarily tighten things by himself - the entire back four needs to work as a solid unit. That said, I would like to see him in the team. Given a choice, I would opt for replacing Distin. He is beginning to look his age and I wonder with a 1 year contract whether the motivation might be ebbing away and his thoughts are turning to retirement.

Our issue appears to be the large number of serious injuries our players are suffering. Whether this is bad luck or poor fitness conditioning we probably won't find out until the day Bobby leaves and beans are spilled (anyone remember Mark Ward's description of training under Mike Walker?).

We will take some stopping if we are able to tighten up at the back. Should our squad remain relatively healthy for the bulk of the season and we sign a back-up to Lukaku a top 4 finish is a very real possibility. Alternatively, a serious tilt at the Europa, with its Champions League place, would be a glorious way to end the season.

Disappointed with the dropped points so far, but there is much to come. Lets hope the manager gets us defending better sooner rather than later.

Hi Patrick - that's a fair response. Not sure that people are turning on Martinez - I am certainly not. I am happy he's at the helm. His perfomance last year was terrific. What I am agaisn't is complacency and a seeming unwillingess to adapt his philosophy - no one is asking him to forgo or compromise it.

Just a quick question to you: What are your thoughts on the pre-season and do you believe there is any connectivity with this and the opening two games? Also, in hindsight, what are your thoughts with the length of time he spent at the World Cup?

I think the pre-season was disjointed and for whatever reason that has given those who don't like RM to have something to use against him. But these players are paid thousands a week and should be aware of the fitness levels required, perhaps they have also over-relaxed in the run-up to the season and not pushed themselves as much as they did in previous seasons. Perhaps it has been a deliberate decision on behalf of the management but I can't accept that because 3 points at this stage of the season are equal to 3 points later in the season. Had Everton FC won those two games 2-1 nobody would have been raising it as an issue, I'm not dismissing it totally but as I don't have the players individual records available I am not in a position to judge how fit they are compared to other seasons.

I am more inclined to believe that the Everton players in both games thought they had the points in the bag and lacked the necessary professional attitude to see the games out, if we had have been losing both matches 2-1 in the closing stages we would have found the energy to try and rescue the situation similar to the reaction at Leicester when it cane too late to win the game for the second time.

I have no issue with playing things smart and not taking unnecessary risks at the death but why change your style & attitude when you have dominated for 75 mins. The players need to answer that question. As for RM, well he had selected the correct team and tactics as the 2-0 lead attested to. When it became obvious that we were sitting back late on then his job to get a message out to the players or change personnel earlier.

Fitness? Come on, professional athletes. The Everton players were no more tired than Arsenal's. The difference was that the Londoners showed a bit of spirit and effort at the end and were rewarded. Let that be a lesson for our guys. But let''s not forget that we were totally outclassing a team that is earmarked for top 4 by most pundits. Learn and move on. A bright season still awaits!

Others - and I include myself in this bunch - re-act to the game by game performance and express our fears as a means of relief. We, too, hope things will get better but don't automatically expect them to do so.

Whichever camp we fall into, we're still proud to be Evertonians!

I also want. To thank all the contributors here at TW as a fan for only 5 years my knowledge of game time situations certainly is lacking. I wish I grew up with this game instead of American football which is so over commercialized and boring that in the last three years the only games I have watched in their entirety is the SuperBowl.

As has been pointed out on here though, basic, positioning issues with Jagielka and Distin were shown to be the main cause of their first goal.

On thread about The boss ruing the fact that we had players blowing out of their arses with a good twenty minutes to go (something all of Goodison witnessed). We still have the same people who told us to calm down because pre season wasnt important, trying to convince us to deny the evidence of our own eyes.

Martinez 's devotees are getting themsleves in a right pickle. In an attempt to support their earlier defence of his
"preparation " they are now having to contradict him by claiming we don't have a fitness issue.

At least Martinez is admitting that this is "where we are" at the moment