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Walking out of Goodison on Sunday we all felt angry, frustrated and concerned at yet another poor defensive display littered with silly mistakes. We have all been through the game and the games before this and pin-pointed the errors and poor play but this article isn’t about that, this is about some of the ludicrous comments I’ve seen since that game yet again about our manager.
Suggesting he should go back to Wigan, or hes not up to the job makes me laugh, this is the same man who we all lauded last season, the School Of Science and all that and in the space of 5 games at the start of this season hes all of a sudden poor and “back to his Wigan ways”.
The team selection yesterday was a mistake on his part of course it was, we all expected maybe one or two changes but not that many and an apparent change of system in the 1st half in which it looked we had nobody down the left hand side with Osman looking slightly lost and confused as to were he was meant to be playing. Stones playing right back isn’t the answer when Coleman isn’t available and we seen in the previous two games to this that Stones playing centre half is a must now as we look a lot more solid and composed in there with him at the centre. The gaffer may of been forced into that decision with seemingly no-one else fit and available there to fill in. Putting things into perspective we have conceded to many goals at home, we have been punished for every mistake we have made, punished emphatically were stats will show in the 3 home league games we have had, combined the opposition have had 14 attempts on our goal, in which 11 goals have been conceded.
I for one think its all combined down to poor out of form players there namely Jags and Distin even Howard at times, and bad luck, and with bad luck i mean look at that statistic, not many sides will concede 11 goals in 14 attempts. I also feel this will settle down, he will now surely know that Stones has to play at centre back, probably with Jags being his partner, I will be happy with this as I think we will concede a lot less goals and start winning matches again. As I put in a previous article its not all down to the centre backs either, Barry was good on Thursday and at West Brom, but not to the standards of last season, nor has McCarthy reached them heights yet either, these are two hugely important players for us in protecting our defence, especially are full backs when they bomb forward.
For me it all comes down to form, sometimes it happens at the start of a season, and we all know in previous years that were not always the best of starters, its not a great excuse but it happens, if this was 15 games into the season and not 5 I think the panic button would be getting hit by me too, but its not, and the main reason for that is our gaffer, his philosophy and plan for our great club is still work in progress and its one I’m still 110% behind. Its hard to look back and in football its something that ideally shouldn’t be done but 5 games ago everything was good, and rosey, we had a wonderful campaign, we had the 3rd best defence and we played some of the best football some of us have ever seen at Everton.
Form is temporary class is permanent and that’s still the case here, our players don’t turn bad overnight, the team doesn’t turn bad over 5 games either, I believe we will get our form back, I believe Stones will be a main stay centre back now, I believe we will buy a top class defender as our next transfer target, and more importantly I believe in a man who took us to our best ever Premier League performance and I believe that come May those who have been over critical this early on off the man will be eating the biggest piece of humble pie you can get.
Swansea away was next in the cup and that wasn’t great either but the team was littered with changes and some mistakes. But onto Saturday, not many are confident and the way the starts went and previous years its easy to understand, but this is a manager who set this side up to win at Old Trafford last season and outplay Arsenal and Chelsea away as well, for large periods , he will certainly have no fear going there and neither do I, why should we? The players mentally weren’t ready to win there last season was Bobby’s reasoning, I believe that was the case, we used to go to these places and hope to get a point, with no intention of winning, now we have a manager who wants to win at these places, and i believe we will.
I will be in a minority on that but I believe in this man and what he wants to do with our great club. Martinez isn’t afraid of our past, and I’m not afraid of our future with him in charge, trust this man we have all seen already what he can do, bring it on.
COYB!! ETID!!
Stephen Leary,
Twitter, @MrandMrsEverton