da cassino： When Roberto Martinez met Bill Kenwright in 2013, he promised the Everton chairman Champions League football. Three seasons later and the Toffees find themselves six points adrift of the Premier League’s top half – the top four isn’t even on their radar.
da pixbet： The objective was always ambitious for a club that had claimed a top four spot just once under the Spaniard’s predecessor, David Moyes, in 11 years at Goodison Park, not to mention a manager who had never finished higher than 15th in the Premier League before. In comparison to the division’s other top eight regulars, Everton are ever-stifled by their own limitations – particularly in terms of finance – seemingly battling against a club-specific glass ceiling as much as any rival.
Yet, the Merseyside club have not stagnated under Martinez; they are not trapped in the eighth-to-fifth purgatory that Moyes endlessly endured; rather, the situation is far worse. With the exception of a thrilling first season that saw a prodigious young cohort and attacking football emerge, Everton have steadily moved backwards with the former Swansea and Wigan gaffer at the helm.
It is hardly groundbreaking to label that as the biggest frustration surrounding Martinez’s three-year tenure – one only need to cross-reference the current Premier League table with the last 10 years. But the gravest disappointment is his failure to build upon what Moyes left behind; a stable club, a squad of well-proven top half professionals and a team that prided itself on a solid defensive base
There is perhaps no greater gift in the Premier League than inheriting a team from Sam Allardyce or Tony Pulis, the philosophical leaders of English football’s clean-sheet cult. Take Slaven Bilic at West Ham; he’s added attacking verve to Allardyce’s dogged Hammers and the results speak for themselves – sixth in the Premier League table and an FA Cup quarter-final.
Likewise, it’s no coincidence that Mark Hughes has risen critical acclaim at Stoke City since succeeding Pulis in 2013 and that Crystal Palace’s incredible 2015 under Alan Pardew, winning 19 of their 39 Premier League fixtures, came six months after the Welshman had lead them to survival through defensive discipline and lightening-paced counter-attacks.
I’m not putting Moyes in the same category as Allardyce and Pulis, who are first and foremost relegation avoidance experts, but his Everton side was forged on similar ideals of physicality, direct attacking and a well-organised back four.
In theory, Martinez was the perfect candidate to add attacking layers to the structure Moyes left behind, and it’s not as if he hasn’t received due backing to do so. Whilst Moyes worked on a shoestring budget in the transfer market, his successor has already splashed out almost £100million on new players and set a new club-record to bring in Romelu Lukaku for £28million – the kind of star-studded goalscorer the Scot always had to make do without. Martinez’s net spend per season has been over ten times that of the former Real Sociedad gaffer, whilst his most expensive signing came at close to double the previous biggest sum.
But the biggest indicator of support from the Goodison hierarchy arguably isn’t shown in the numbers. Last summer, the Merseyside club could have cashed in on Lukaku, John Stones, Ross Barkley, Seamus Coleman and Ross Barkley, but deterred advances from a variety of clubs to keep Martinez’s promising starting XI intact.
Yet, Everton’s greatest strengths under Moyes have since become their inherent weaknesses. They were once a team whose success depended upon being greater than the sum of its parts, but are now fuelled by the brilliance of individuals who – to paraphrase Leighton Baines – lack the ‘chemistry’ to work as a cohesive unit. Moyes’ Everton played direct, yet positive football; Martinez’s Toffees are now intentionally indirect as a point of principle, despite having one of the most potent battering rams in Europe, Lukaku, leading their front line.
The Goodison outfit were previously amongst the toughest defensive sides in the division – they concede now over 1.2 goals per game under Martinez. And most damningly of all, from the 42-year-old’s 110 Premier League games in charge, Everton have thrown away 43 points from winning positions. If we break that down to around 14 points per campaign, the Toffees would be eighth instead of eleventh right now – far more in line with their historic final standings throughout the Premier League era.
Of course, not every season under Moyes was positive. His league finishes spanned from 17th to 4th, ending three campaigns outside of the top half and finishing fifth or higher on just four occasions. His win rate is actually lower than Martinez’s whilst his loss rate is higher – albeit by the slimmest of margins and stretched over a longer period.
But the differences remain the circumstances both managers inherited and the Premier League dynamics surrounding them. When Moyes took the helm in March 2002, his first challenge was to avoid relegation; Martinez, on the other hand, was in a position to aim for Champions League qualification.
Likewise, whilst Moyes could never break the monopoly of the traditional ‘big four’, later joined by Manchester City, the current campaign is very much open season in the Premier League – something you’d expect a young, attacking side and a club on the peripheries of the division’s elite for so long to take full advantage of. On paper, Martinez’s heralded youngsters are as talented as Tottenham Hotspur’s; yet whilst Mauricio Pochettino has managed to gel his together into a title-contending side, the Everton boss has only got the best out of his as individuals.
Nobody is disputing that Everton needed to be taken in a new direction after Moyes’ departure, and for a club who’ve spent their recent history overshadowed financially, an attacking philosophy can be a real advantage in the transfer market.
But when considering what Moyes achieved by the end of his third full term at Goodison, a top four finish, and considering how far Everton are away from that this year, despite much of their starting XI being lauded by the biggest clubs in Europe, it’s hard to fight Martinez’s corner. He inherited a solid squad and a stable club and was issued due finance to improve it, but has ultimately failed to deliver.
If you were Everton’s new 49.9% shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, would you trust him with more money to spend this summer?
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