Surely the pretence has to stop

Nice article. In answer to your last line: Kenwright won't, maybe the next chairman will.

Martinez simply refuses to see any flaws in himself, and it is costing us big time. Even small changes in games would affect the opposition. Take Stones on Sunday for example, it was clear to see that Swansea attackers had targeted him and his insistence on playing out from the back. For me, all it would take would be for Stones to hit a few long, and hey presto the attackers would have to think twice about whether or not to expend early energy in chasing him down, but no, they always know there is a chance.

We are again in a position, and on a run of games where I am scratching our head wondering where our next win is going to come from, and even then knowing that it has been 10 months since we put back to back wins together, so it would likely be another false dawn. No doubt Martinez would still go over the top like he does after every win in the praise for his players (Lukaku best in Europe, Barry best English player ever etc.). Its little wonder we never win more than one game. One win and Martinez makes them think they've made it.

He's brought in some really good players that wouldn't have considered us otherwise (Deulofeu, Lukaku), but he's spectacularly failed to get the best out of them. Give him until the end of the season and then get rid. I've no idea who to replace him with, but then I'm not the chairman of EFC so it doesn't matter what I think anyway. I'm just a paying supporter who is sick of seeing a squad with bags of potential being wasted by a manager who can't work out how to defend.

I can't think of any other manager who would insist on persisting with a player who has constantly cost us points. I said in the summer he deserves all the shit coming his way if he didn't address the 'keeper situation at the club. It just seem so obvious it's becoming a running joke, and I believe it's affecting the whole team and the atmosphere. There were more ironic cheers on Sunday, it's like a fucking pantomime.

I can't get my head around the thought process around Howard's constant inclusion no matter what happens on the pitch. I hope Martinez is proud of his loyalty when he's managing in the Chamionship. Fool.

I just wish he had played Seamus from the start because I think we would have won that game. Like you have stated, that's where he falls down: bad player decisions.

Please God we are taken over within the next few weeks, and Martinez is shown the door. We have a great group of young players, but if something isn't done they will all jump ship in the Summer, and we will be left with a relegation team – the new Wigan!!!

It's the hope that kills you!

His hopes lie at the Etihad, but a successful evening looks less likely than after the home leg, as our form has collapsed, while Man City, though vulnerable at the back, have Mr Aguero hitting form.

The return of Jags will help, but I am sure that we will come up with a defensive mistake or two to extinguish our hopes, even if we do get that away goal.

Defeat will surely turn up the heat on this man, but as to whether our old-fashioned, principled Chairman would be proactive enough to give Martinez the push, I doubt very much. Even while we are in the FA Cup, and with a mathematical chance of the Europa league, our Chairman will stick with him. We are a nice club, with a nice Chairman, with nice players, in a cut-throat, money-led league, where nice guys lose.

No big pressure on Bill, equals no big pressure on Roberto, so whatever happens, the Sun will rise on Thursday morning, some old excuses will be rehashed, and we will prepare to compete in the next game.

Blame the crowd!!!! Toffee woman next??? Happy day for me when he's kicked out.

It's been obvious for years that the joy managers had in visiting Wigan has now transferred to them genuinely looking forward to visiting Goodison despite the media crap they all come out with about it being "a very tough arena" etc etc, after they win.

The results scream this to one and all. If Kenwright feels the need to justify giving Martinez the boot he could just cite his total lack of professionalism in consistently failing to address schoolboy necessities such as defence and fitness.

Oh, and the "coaches" need to go too. They're contaminated.

Great piece Jim.

I never want Everton to lose but... A cup final and relegation is a nightmare a wake up from every morning.

This guy can spin that much shit, he could make shit coats for a living.

With the exception of Mike Walker who only lasted a few months, Martinez is in my view the worst Everton manager of my lifetime – and that is a considered opinion not a rant. Never have I seen an Everton team perform so consistently poorly taking into account the standard of the players at their disposal. There have been some poor Everton teams over the years, but the present team is not a poor team – it's potentially a very good team if only it was managed well.

Unfortunately, when you have a manager who steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the importance of getting the basics of the game right, there is no hope of any improvement. Why can't the board see that?

As for tomorrow night, my team would be a bit controversial and I will explain why after the team. I would play:

Robles, Coleman, Stones, Jagielka, Baines, Lennon, Barry, McCarthy, Cleverley, Pienaar, Lukaku.

The reason for omitting Barkley and Deulofeu is that they both run out of gas after an hour or so and with this team hopefully were still right in the game at this time.

Then we bring these two on with the game opening up with the hope of them winning the game for us. The injuries to Besic and Mirallas are a blow as these would have started before Cleverley and Pienaar in my team.

Our style of play and formation is so predictable, it is making it so much easier for other managers to set their own teams up against us.

When taking the quality of our squad into account, 6 victories out of 23 is just not good enough. Two of those against the bottom two and two fairly fortunate wins against Newcastle Utd and West Brom. Only the Southampton and Chelsea victories really stand out for me this season.

You do not adhere to such a philosophy slavishly. When your centre back has the ball near the goal line out wide, that's the time for the hoof. You play football out from the back when you are sorted as a unit and there are players making runs in front of you to find with the ball, not when you're backed into a corner. Similarly, Cruyff turns in the box is risky stuff.

The manager needs to tell players: "Look, you're the one on the pitch, if you think its time to get rid and push up, do it. Use your initiative. Obviously I'd prefer if you can play out from the back, but it isn't always the wise thing to do."

To paraphrase the (ahem) late, great Bob Paisley: 'If you're unsure what to do, bang it up-field and we'll discuss your options later.'

You can excuse a season if you are trying something new but you must be able to observe the negatives as well as the positives and do something about the negatives. Doing nothing about the negatives (defense) is, as some one else put, just extremely unprofessional.

BK will not fire him as this will show he made a mistake, a mistake he made by simply excepting that after Wigan beat Everton in the cup Martinez became his first and only choice as Everton's new manager.

Martinez from the last few games of his first season to over half way of his third season has not performed up to the expectations of a Everton manager and as such, unless he is capable of turning it around should be fired.

If you swap Howard for Butland/Lloris this season the team would be top 6.
If you replaced Kone for Vardy/Ighalo we would be in the top 4.

Rubbish... you think they'd have the same impact playing on the left wing... Mr Martinez doesn't do 2 upfront.

Chris( #21), I couldn't agree more about players taking responsibility and thinking for themselves. It was obvious to me on Sunday, albeit from the comfort of my armchair, that Swansea were deliberately pushing up against our back 4 knowing that we would try to play it around at the back.

It was almost inevitable there would be a mistake, incidentally a good and aware keeper would have made and cleared that backpass and and would probably have drawn a free kick when he got clattered.

The point is though the players should be savvy enough to know when a change of style is needed. I only ever played park football but we knew enough to realise that when we were against the wind on an open pitch we kept the ball down and passed it around.

When it was with us we used it to play long and keep the opposition under pressure. Nobody had to tell us this, it was just about common sense and using our vast experience as 20 and 21 year olds with no coaching whatsoever!

Barring the kind of demonstrable change and promise that gives real expectation of a top 4 push next season (and even that's a stretch), there's no chance the core members of the squad are going to stick around another year.

I can't see that change happening in any circumstance other than a managerial change now (which means it won't happen).

Martinez seems a nice guy. I admire lots of his principles and he looks to have an eye for young talent (or is that the scouts?) but he has surely proven now that he is a limited manager in many respects. Repeated mistakes, reactive rather than proactive substitutions, tactically outfought in a few cases and failing to address the clear defensive deficiencies in his chosen system. The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is 12th, with one win in 10 despite having surely our best squad in a few decades and a relatively easy time of it injury wise.

If he had coached excellent league teams before with well organised systems then I might be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and a bit more time but the fact is that HE NEVER HAS. In hoping that he can combine the free flowing football with a more solid team we are waiting for him to do something that he has never previously been able to do and I fear never will.

He has carried on that way since his Swansea days and throughout his reign with Wigan so why should we expect him to change now.

Besides having some of the best players in the world Barcelona still benefit from being in a league and a (hot) country where the intensity of the game is much less.

Unfortunately for Martinez we don't play the game in Spain, we play it in England and he just doesn't get it.

I felt he should have gone last Xmas and can only think Bill's illness, patience and the supposed takeover are the only reasons he is still in a job.

Leaving Martinez in place is the only option. If the club is sold the buyer will see and decide for himself if he is the man for another year or more. Likely they will conclude, as most correspondents to this site do, that he cannot take us further forward. But I suspect they want to be in a position to make that sort of decision themselves. Not have it made for them by the previous owners.

Regrettable I know but it is another spanner in the works along with the conundrum; well if he goes who comes in?

Uber for Martinez.

I take the point of his inflexible attitude I don't think he cant see the problem with those two players I think he does he just has so much unshakeable faith in his beliefs that he feels (wrongly imo) he can mask their particular deficiencies with his style of play.

Robin

The good think about that scenario is because of his eye for a player if there is an exodus in the summer the combined fees will be well over £100M which is plenty for any possible new manager to be getting on with.

I say we wait until the end of the season and see where we are but if it's another bottom-half finish with no cup to show for it then it is adios senor.

Sam at #29 also neatly covers my thoughts but, and before people think I am defending Martinez as a Manager, what was he like at Swansea?

Was there defence as dodgy as ours? Was he there when they got promoted or did someone else step in and complete the job?

I could check myself but haven't.

I think he was more successful at Swansea but they were in the second division which he got them promoted to but not without his typical poor run of games followed by a good run of games.

It has to be remembered that Swansea were on the up then following a path laid out by Jenkins but Martinez left for Wigan under a cloud as he had promised he would have to be sacked to leave Swansea.

We all know what happened there. The typical Martinez yo-yo effect took place with regular inconsistency while Swansea prospered under Brendan Rogers and ended up in the Prem.

He was preceded at Wigan by the Veritable Steve Bruce who achieved much better results.

Having moved to Wigan, Man Utd beat them 5-0 after it being 0-0 at half time.

And lost 9-1 against Spurs. He does like these high scoring matches. To be fair he does indicate according to the BBC website that the manner of defeat was unacceptable. Also to be fair Wigan were only 1-0 down at halftime and managed to lose 8 goals after the 55th minute. But fair play to him and his tactics. He saw fit not to make any subs until 5-1 down. Probably thought the performance was okay. His second and last sub in the 85th minute was effective as Spurs went on to score a few more ..

Who can wait for tomorrow. Everton will win and get to Wembley. Play Stoke and lose. It's in the stars!

Twice with ironic cheers Howard caught the ball from corners and looked to realise a quick throw and guess what, every player in our box, even the hard as nails no messing defender Deulofeu!! What the hell is he doing defending a corner?

You know what happens next: Howard keeps the ball, waits for Swansea to get back in position then rolls it to Stones. 20 passes later we still haven't passed the half way line. It's as if Martinez doesn't want to score an easy goal, everything must have 20 passes and be a wonder goal. It happens every game.

Present players have alluded to the fact that Martinez is not big on fitness training preferring ball work.

Thousands of people should never have pretended he had improved our defence in his first season when they knew it was Moyes's defensive unit.

They should never have pretended it was ok to fuck off to South America moonlighting then pretend pre-season preparation didnt really matter

They should never have argued till they were blue in the face that we did not hand goals on a plate to opposition by fucking about with the ball in dangerous area's.

They should never have pretended we were playing fantastic football especially when the Goodison faithful were howling their derision.

They should never have pretended that Martinez had a "plan"

They should never have pretended that he was a genius because he could spot young talented players and sign them despite fierce opposition from richer clubs

The should never have pretended that we were going eyeball to Eyeball at the grounds of top four clubs.

They should never have pretended that we were making progress when they could clearly see we were going backwards

They should never have blamed the crowd

What really pisses me off . . is that all those who tried to silence critics by labeling them "Haters" . ."Negative" and "anti Everton" are now weighing in themselves. They are pretending this is not what they signed up for.

They wanted football played out from the back - They got it

They wanted bobbie because he thought positively - They got it

They wanted Martinez to be given more time despite witnessing the worst football ever seen last season - They got it.

They got everything they wanted . .now they're screaming it's shite.

Well this is it. This is what you signed up for.

Martinez is here to stay, if he was going to go it should have been last season. . .but they said he was "building a Dynasty"

The game against City is Massive. Anyone who says he wants us to lose should tender his resignation as an Evertonian. We have huge gaping holes in our team, but some of our players are immensely talented. We have a manager who clearly isn't up to the day to day running of a top football club, but he may just have enough X factor to deliver the trophy we all so badly crave. We have more than a puncher's chance.

The last generation of Everton players knew how to get top six, but they choked in the big games. This class is yet to be tested. Maybe they will turn out to be big game players ?

We'll find out tomorra

Give the man stick for things he his doing wrong, but writing things that don't ring true, doesn't make sense to me.

One of the biggest problems these last two seasons, is the fact that we have been very unbalanced out wide. The only time we have looked compact, is when either Osman or Cleverley, have been asked to play out of position out wide.

We will certainly lose quality players and if RM is still in charge then we are looking at the lower third of the table and all the joys of a relegation battle.

It's exactly the same when you speak to any Evertonian leaving the game ot wherever you meet them. Everyone I go to the match with feels exactly the same.

One thing that's beginning to intrigue me though is whether he's aware of the feeling of supporters. It also begs the question whether anyone in the club's decision making hierarchy is getting the vibes.

Martinez has a subtle way of never personally taking the blame for anything that goes wrong. Whenever he speaks he says things like don't judge John Stones too soon, allow Barkley to make mistakes and so on.

He reminds me of those managers I've observed over the years who say something like "I take full responsibility for the players performance. I pick the team and the buck stops with me". What they really mean is "As you all really know these players are a bunch of shite and I'm the poor sod who has to manage them". It's a way of shifting the blame but appearing to be manfully taking responsibility.

Although Martinez could never bring himself to say something like that himself he's actually using a different ploy to shift the majority of responsiblity on to the fans and to a lesser extent the players themselves but not on to himself.

At what stage does he get the message that most of us are holding him responsible for what's happening. That's another way of saying who tells the emperor that he's not wearing any clothes?

The Echo is starting to let the supporters do the dirty work, although to be fair Greg O'Keefe and Michael Ball are having a dabble at it.

All those people who think that we should wait. Why?

Will things improve if he stays? Will we be one of the few clubs that don't improve after a bad manager is sacked?

Just why let him drag us further down when every league place is worth so much?

You hit the nail on the head... or should it be... Martinez on the head.

I have lost patience, he will never listen and learn from previous mistakes. We all make mistakes but not over and over again.

A 6-year apprenticeship, a slow slow learner! New owners will not put up with it. Further more in August you won't see half of this team in an EFC shirt. They will be gone.

As for Martinez, all his teams after his first promotion have slowly slid down the league until, in Wigan's case, relegation. I suppose it is a combination of poor player fitness and predictable tactics.

If Lukaku jumps ship in the summer, I can see the same happening to us next year. Too big to get relegated? Bigger clubs than us have gone down.

It does make me laugh that he is perceived as a great philosopher and tactician when he actually does exactly the same thing over and over. I can only assume this perception is because he is Spanish as there is no factual evidence whatsoever.

He has to go before it's too late.

Will Martinez be sacked ? Not unless we lose badly against Man City and Carlisle because The Everton Football Club and its fans are all ladies and gentlemen and an inexcusable display consisting of poor tactics, lack of effort a display of really poor skills is the ONLY case for sacking a manager early.

Hence the two reasons for 'resting' Jags. We stand more chance of getting to Wembley and Martinez gets more coverage in the USA.

However our club has had some shockingly bad decisions this year, clearly offside goals allowed, great tackles producing wrongly given penalties etc. We are use to bad decisions but last week one of the commentators and a referee (both pundits) both agreed those decisions have really been bad and have cost us at least 7 or 8 points this season. So if there is any justice we should win the League and FA Cups.

Still we should be making our own luck as they say because the harder they work the luckier they should become. So let it be EFC v LFC and lets get our players fighting fit and win the bloody thing.

Like Kevin T #4, I find it difficult to support Martinez while he continues to pick Howard, a keeper I didn't rate when he joined from United and my opinion has not changed. He suits some people, he suits Martinez but he doesn't suit me. A good shot-stopper but too many inexplicable costly decisions with time to think.

As for the tactics. To be quite honest, I've yet to fathom them out. The playing out from the back and the possession stuff come from Martinez but the players still do their own thing. He certainly wouldn't instruct Stones to mess around at the back and make himself a target. His partner, Funes Mori, just tries to defend in the normal manner. The Deulofeu crosses come from the lad himself. Jags will play his normal suicidal high line even though we no longer have the height and pace of Distin. Pienaar will do his Pienaar stuff and so it goes. Complicated instructions slow us down early on but once the ball hits the back of our net we revert to our normal game.

So there we have it. A season where the abysmal home results have taken the shine off everything. He is building a young useful squad but so long as he sticks with Howard and the players back off instead of closing down, I want a new man in charge.

Maybe it's not too wild a theory to suggest that few managers are masters of every element of the game. Let's not forget that with Moyes' base, Martinez provided exactly what was needed for a short period.

I wonder whether you accept that team management will always fall to one person, but that they could just be responsible for a phase in the team's development.

Moyes was great at bringing stability and adding a tough core to the side on a budget.

Martinez was able to take that basis and add youth, pace and attacking edge.

Maybe the next step needed to be an experienced head to take that talented team and guide it to real results.

How? How is it entertaining to watch the ball move side to side across the defence? Honestly guys, how does this equate to entertainment.

It is a line used so often on ToffeeWeb it is never challenged but the atmosphere at Goodison is that of a morgue.

I personally think people are bending over backwards to give the man some credit but he doesn't deserve such a compliment in my book.

It's both Colin.

I wonder why he did not discuss with him the tactics he displayed over the season that had seen Wigan relegated, or asked him why nothing had been done to prevent their poor defensive record over the three previous seasons?

Sounds like there was no due diligence done in looking for a new manager after Moyes left.