Everton and the four letter word: Work!

Sticking to your guns can be admirable – but it's bending in the wind that gets you through tough times. So RM can still play a passing game – and, let's be honest, the GP boos are just as loud for a long ball when there's an easier option – but we MUST start putting crosses in the box.

When you HAVEN'T got the ball, press, block, tackle and run like mad to get it back. That's not anti-football – it fits in with RM's wish to play MORE football.

If he can't see this and get his team to enact it, then he won't be in charge by the derby.

All the best to you for the New Year.

The football was awful, we just lumped it to Fergie for the flick on, constantly. To be fair, the season before (minus Ferguson) the football had been very good at times. But that final season Joe had gone percentages. It was turgid.

Joe had ran the squad down and we had a about 15 players senior pros when he left. He also signed Barmby without any idea of what to do with him.

Ironically, I believe he would be ideal to steady things until the end of the season, strictly as a caretaker if Martinez went, in the face of no obvious candidate.

He is a very good man manager and would lift the place. He would also get Lukaku going again, with some actual service, and would definitely have us organised in a couple of training sessions.

It would be very similar situation to his initial appointment actually. That’s if the shit hits the fan in the next few games. Him and Alan Irvine number two to see out this dead season, steady it and then start again.

We all know Martinez is a keen student of continental style tactics and formations, he’s certainly not a "4-5-1 man and that’s your lot" sort of coach. He has said publicly he expects his sides to be able to change formation, and players to be able to adapt to change position mid-game.

Instead of keeping it simple, and getting some results under our belt, he is desperately looking for something that works, a formation where players will suddenly come out of their shells. Watching Baines run down the ’keeper at Newcastle was just strange, the likes of Barkley and Eto’o almost stepping on each other’s toes tells it’s own story.

The players are confused, they are being asked not only to play keep-ball, which we struggle with, they are also being instructed to play in formations which they are uncomfortable with!

Maybe he hasn’t ’lost the dressing room,’ but he certainly has created an air of confusion as to where the players should be on the pitch. How did Baines end up trying to defend a cross against Hull, when this was a central defensive position?

We are on a losing streak, the changes due to injury, suspension and dropping under-performers are hampering us enough, this is now the time for settled tactics and formations, not experimental fucking 2-1-1-4-1-1 you’ve seen at the World Cup. (Okay, I made that last bit up)

You know what I mean though, the players don’t know where they are supposed to be when the ball is turned over, that is where we are being exposed. This is a time for every player to be drilled on defensive duties – not a 3-man defence, with Gareth Barry in the middle of it!

This is the most worrying aspect of all this, not how hard the players are running.

I suspect that, despite still watching a lot of football, he's out of touch with how you've got to manage players these days. I think he'd also struggle with the no-contact way football is played now – his revival of Everton could never have occurred under current tackling rules where every less-than-perfect, often well-intentioned, tackle results in a booking.