Roberto Martinez and Brendan Rodgers: The flawed disciples of Pep Guardiola

I am one of Martinez's biggest critics. I never thought him good enough and still don't. However, to be fair to Martinez, watching the exponent of possession based attacking football at its very best can be exhilarating. It can also be as dull as dish water. Watching Bayern or formally Barca before them, playing keep ball for minutes on end not only switches off the opposition but also the crowd. However, if you have some of the best players in the world who are skilled at keeping the ball then its easy to tolerate the boring bits of the game because you know that, at some point, someone, Messi, Ribery, Robben, Iniesta, etc are going to make a killer pass and they will score a quite wonderful goal. They will also have the skill and know how to make sure the opposition, when they finally get hold of the ball, will not unduly threaten their goal either. Not only have Barca and Bayern have some of the best players in the world, they are also some of the fittest and hardest working players in the world too.

And herein lies the problem. Evertons players are nowhere near fit enough to play the game that Martinez so idolises. Guardiolas teams always work hard to get the ball back. Most notably, the CL final against Man United being the obvious example. I have never seen a United team in recent history be so harassed and so completely second best. It was like watching men against boys that night and this was probably the top 2 teams in Europe. Even in the final couple of minutes they didn't want United to have the ball. Astonishing workrate.

There is absolutely no point extolling a style of play if you are not going to completely embrace all aspects of it. Martinez just wants to embrace the pretty part of it and ignore the dirty side of it. There is no work ethic, he embraces mistakes as part of the learning process. Guardiola's teams don't make mistakes ,or at least very very rarely and when they do, they don't make them again. Martinez's whole philosophy just falls down on this basic point of working hard to regain the football. We are weak, we don't practise corners or set pieces (his words not mine). You can bet your life savings that Guardiolas teams practise the hell out of them.

If I thought that there was any progress of this side of the game in the last 3 seasons, then maybe I wouldn't be so harsh on Martinez. However, we are regressing in terms of fitness, defensive duties/goals conceded and wilting in the dying moments. At least the RS saw the writing on the wall and got rid of Rodgers before he could do any more damage. They could see the backward slide and did something to arrest that slide. Its called still having some ambition. We, at Everton, lost any kind of ambition in the early 90s and have never got it back. Any ambitious team would never tolerate this slide back into midtable mediocrity who leaks goals alarmingly and struggles to get to a cup final let alone challenge the top of the league. We have a shocking home record over the last 2 years and yet still people are saying give Martinez another year or 2. It breaks my heart to see Everton Football Club tolerating this kind of underachievement year after year.

This is Martinez's team. This is his blue print. This is how he wants to play the game. Its not the Guardiola way, with possession based football, armed with fantastic players who work their socks off to get the ball back from the first whistle to the last. No, its the possession based football with ok players who, with a few exceptions, do absolutely nothing to get the ball back, who are lazy, can't defend, are arrogant to supporters concerns, make multiple mistakes, never learns, plucks defeat from the jaws of victory.......in fact put like that, is the antithesis of Guardiolas blueprint. Martinez's time is up. Everton Football Club need to belatedly, 20+ years belatedly, show some ambition and demand that Everton finally challenge the elite and compete for trophies and titles, and finally find a manager that can match those ambitions and not just talk a good game. Enough is enough.

That Liverpool team of 2013-14 got the ball forward as quickly as possibly and played attacking football at express train pace, weren't they 4-0 up after 20 minutes against Arsenal??

It appeared to me they neglected defending that season to try and simply outscore the opposition which they were successful at until the last three matches.

Martinez's team's very rarely outscore opponents, let's be honest how many of these "thrillers" have we won 4-3 or 5-4.?

We get the odd win here and there usually when the opposition is below par but we fail dismally when teams we play against crank up the tempo.

Now, we do not have to aim so low and we should invest in a big manager because that would be money well spent. Someone the players respect before he gets here. We have a brilliant squad (but can always add to in certain areas) but having an experienced and respected and successful manager would also mean he would attract better players.

Also, by investing in a good manager will benefit the whole club whereas one expensive player does not. We need to aim higher on the management front now we can afford to and not just 'make do' like we use to so this club can be taken seriously.

I don't believe we have a fantastic group of world class players but I also don't see us as having too many players that don't belong in the higher reaches of the Premier League either. I bet if you asked Roberto the score of any of Everton's home games played this season he wouldn't be able to tell you.

He's too busy trying to see his dream team, imagining it winning the PL and CL in the same season, whilst in reality HIS team is throwing points away like a bunch of children throwing confetti at a wedding. He has to be the one who sets the standards, he has to be the one who says the rot stops here. But he isn't and he won't, he'll carry on in his own little world, dreaming of perfection, whilst most blues nervously wait for him to wake up.

He has to go before the end of this season, he cannot be allowed to squander any substantial amounts of money and put us back to where we were before the new investor has had time to get his feet under the table. Get someone in who will get back to basics and build from there, it might waste another season as the players re-adapt, but it will not be as much of a gamble as keeping Roberto in his job.