Twenty-eight. The figure represented Everton’s ambition at the start of the season when it equalled the millions spent on their record signing, Romelu Lukaku, and Roberto Martínez described the Belgian’s willingness to leave Chelsea for an alternative Champions League vision as “a real football statement”. It reflects something else today: the tension consuming Goodison Park, the threat to a proud top-flight history and the doubts surrounding a manager awarded a five-year contract 10 months ago.
Twenty-eight points from 28 Premier League games – only once, in 1926-27, have Everton amassed a lower tally at this stage of a season (adopting three points for a win). Thursday brought another encouraging European display as they recovered from a goal down to beat Dynamo Kyiv 2-1 in the last 16 of the Europa League. Everton have as many victories in nine Europa League games, six, as in 31 domestic fixtures this season, having also fallen at the first hurdle of the FA Cup and Capital One Cup for the first time. Newcastle United will stretch Goodison’s patience to the limit should they become the 11th of 14 visitors to leave L4 this season with a point or three on Sunday.
In many respects, Dynamo Kyiv was Martínez’s reign in microcosm. With more aggression, urgency and pace in their play Everton were the relentless unit of the manager’s uplifting debut season and dominated Ukraine’s unbeaten league leaders. Yet five minutes before Steven Naismith equalised Oleh Gusev’s cheap opening goal from a set piece (another recent Everton trait), sizeable sections of the crowd booed as another pass rolled across the backline. Patience with patient football without an end product had snapped. The jeers were for the manager’s style of play more than the practitioners on the pitch.
“This is a moment when we need each other more than ever,” Martínez said. “We need to help each other in the Premier League and to help the players express themselves.” It was a reasonable request but the crowd had cause to vent their frustration having witnessed, in those opening 35 minutes, the type of rigid, ponderous performance that has repeatedly led Everton into a dead end this season.
Everton have flourished with the freedom Europe has offered. The display against Dynamo will strengthen Martínez’s convictions about the capabilities of his team but the more compressed confines of the Premier League has stifled them. Tony Pulis set the template for nullifying Everton last April when his Crystal Palace pressed the productive full-backs, Leighton Baines and Seamus Coleman, and came away with a 3-2 win that derailed Everton’s hopes of Champions League qualification. The tactic has been employed regularly since and Martínez has yet to produce a solution.
There is more to why a squad possessing eight players involved in the World Cup plus the calibre of James McCarthy, Coleman and John Stones find themselves fighting to preserve a top‑flight status stretching back to 1954. As the captain, Phil Jagielka, admitted recently: “The blip has lasted too long so it is difficult to call it a blip.”
Injuries, a steady stream of individual errors, refereeing mistakes, the wrong player insisting on taking a penalty and missing in a goalless draw; Martínez can legitimately point to them all in mitigation. Barring a calamitous four-match losing streak over Christmas, Everton are not being outplayed or comprehensively beaten. A strong, well-balanced squad, who have become easy to contain in the Premier League, have forgotten the art of winning and struggle to break down opponents who face little threat beyond Lukaku or Kevin Mirallas and frequently benefit from a defensive lapse.
Andy Gray labelled his former team “too soft” in December. Last week, Tim Sherwood bracketed Everton alongside his Aston Villa in terms of their mental approach. “We’re like Everton,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve got a group of players who are cut out for a relegation battle. Our squad is better on the ball, they’re more suited to pushing for a place in the Europa League.” An attempt to put pressure on a relegation rival perhaps but not a million miles from the truth.
Before the season’s opener at Leicester City Martínez declared his squad were stronger than the one who produced Everton’s record points total in the Premier League era, 72, during his first campaign in charge. There were no dissenting voices with Gareth Barry, like Lukaku, turning an influential loan spell into a permanent move on a three-year contract, Muhamed Besic adding tenacity to midfield and the on-loan Barcelona winger, Gerard Deulofeu, the only notable departure. He was offset by the arrival of the Chelsea loanee Christian Atsu plus, in a further statement of intent, the medal-laden veteran Samuel Eto’o.
Eto’o’s experience would be invaluable to Ross Barkley and Stones “for a minimum of two years” according to Martínez. The former Cameroon international left for Sampdoria at the earliest available opportunity to be closer to his family in Milan, officially, but amid rumours of dressing-room conflict with the manager. Martínez denied any fallout over his methods, as have a host of senior players, although there was a notable shift from his possession principles from the FA Cup tie against West Ham United onwards when Everton went more direct towards Lukaku.
“He’s not a closed book,” said Jagielka, contradicting the image Martínez has projected of himself this season. “West Ham pressed us a lot, which didn’t allow us to play out from the back and meant a lot of goal-kicks and free-kicks went up to Rom. It wasn’t as if we were all waiting in a room for the manager, lined him up and threatened him.”Martínez was on the defensive in August, denying that a pre-season training schedule designed to ease players back from the World Cup and towards a strong second half to the campaign had been too lax. Late goals conceded cheaply in 2-2 draws at Leicester and in the next game against Arsenal, having dominated the match until the closing stages, did not help his argument.
Those four dropped points have set the tone for the entire campaign according to the Catalonian and no team have lost more points from winning positions this season than Everton (17).
Yet he was still claiming the opening two draws had instilled the fear of having something to lose following Everton’s last league game at Goodison, another 2-2 draw with Nigel Pearson’s bottom-of-the-table side. The insistence that psychological blows dating back to August have left a permanent scar has worn thin. Nor is it backed up by Everton’s form or results, both better earlier in the season than currently, and what it says about the mentality of the dressing room is another matter. If indeed it is true.
The faults against Leicester have been evident all term and lay at the manager’s door. Everton were again ultra-cautious and predictable in possession. Tim Howard, immediately recalled from injury last month to replace the improving Joel Robles, a groundless decision given the American’s inconsistent form beforehand, was again at fault as another lead slipped away.
Goodison is not a place for spin and Martínez’s promises of a bright blue tomorrow have rebounded. Away from the cameras and when the recording devices are switched off, the intelligent manager can be searingly honest, scathing, direct, impassioned – all the traits he keeps distant from his public persona but something supporters want to see as they worry his amiable nature has transmitted into the team’s performances. An anaemic 2-0 defeat at Stoke City last week “changed everything” according to Martínez, and he has been noticeably more open about Everton’s predicament since. “I’m not hiding from the severity of the situation,” he said repeatedly this week. It has been a welcome step, although what really matters is a change in the dire sequence of league results.
The 41-year-old is not some laissez-faire manager with an eye on an afternoon’s golf session but an educated workaholic involved in every aspect of the club from the youth setup to building overnight accommodation at the Finch Farm training complex. It was his transfer planning that enabled Everton to sign Lukaku, who has been as erratic as you would expect a 21-year-old striker to be but has an impressive 16 goals, and build a decent squad. It was Martínez who removed the so-called glass ceiling from Everton’s ambitions last season, overseeing a positive style that prompted the Gwladys Street to declare “The School of Science” had reopened. It looked an astute move when the chairman, Bill Kenwright, handed his manager a new contract in June.
All of which makes this season’s intransigence, tactically and in his refusal to consider dropping Howard or Barry (hugely influential against Dynamo in fairness), the dramatic deterioration in the effectiveness of his substitutions, the misuse and regression of Barkley and the increasing reliance on Lukaku all the more mystifying to the Goodison faithful.
Martínez must produce a repeat of the final hour against Dynamo in the remaining 10 league games to restore confidence in his tenure. Otherwise, the fear will grow at Everton that it is Wigan Athletic all over again, only with better players and no excuses.
