Roberto Martínez has backed Garry Monk’s credentials as a future England head coach and said the 36-year-old has been the Premier League’s most influential manager since taking charge at Swansea City.
The Everton manager returns to his former club on Saturday convinced that Monk will be a candidate for the England job in the post-Roy Hodgson era.
Martínez may be biased towards his Swansea counterpart – he appointed him captain of the Welsh club after becoming manager in 2007 and gave a new contract to the defender as he recovered from a cruciate injury. But the Spaniard believes no Premier League manager surpasses Monk’s varying achievements over the past 19 months of avoiding relegation, leading a club to its highest points total in the top flight and opening this campaign impressively while integrating players.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he was linked with England,” said the Everton manager. “I don’t see another manager who has had as big an influence over the last three seasons in terms of taking different roles. What he has done with Swansea has been very impressive from every angle you look at it.
“He was thrown into it when the club needed to avoid relegation [after Michael Laudrup’s departure] and gave them direction, stabilised the team and found the way to win important games. The next step was to have a clear idea of how to carry on with the philosophy of the football club, to be flexible, and Swansea finished in their highest ever position in the Premier League. That is down to work done over 10 months, it doesn’t happen over a short period, and it shows that he gets his ideas across and he is innovative.
“Then this season is the most impressive one for me because he lost two or three important players, brought younger legs into the squad and the results on the pitch have been exactly the same. Garry deserves incredible credit for dealing with different situations while having incredible continuity on the pitch.”
Swansea suffered their first defeat of the season at Watford last weekend but have not dropped a point at the Liberty Stadium. Martínez views the Watford reverse as an exception and believes Everton’s improved form will face a severe test in south Wales. He added: “Swansea deserved to beat Manchester United in their last home game and that speaks volumes for where they are and where they can go. You feel that with Garry there, there are many, many good things that can arrive for Swansea.”
Everton are level on points with Monk’s side following their impressive 3-1 defeat of Chelsea last Saturday, when Steven Naismith scored the club’s first hat-trick in the fixture since William Ralph ‘Dixie’ Dean plundered five in 1931. The Scotland international appeared from the substitutes’ bench after an early hamstring injury to Muhamed Besic, who faces a fitness test at Swansea along with Seamus Coleman, and Martínez said not even a hat-trick against the champions guarantees a player a starting role.
The Everton manager, who rejected a deadline-day offer from Norwich City for Naismith, said: “I really enjoy working with Steven because he has such an intelligent footballing brain. He is a manager’s dream really. But then you have to understand we want to build a winning squad that can achieve something special, so it is going to be tougher and harder to get playing time for any player. That is what you want to be part of. That is the only way you can improve the level of the side and achieve things.”
