Martinez: I will always treasure my memories at Everton

So glad he's gone.

Him taking £10 million from our club for abject failure and then sweet talking the Belgium job a few weeks later makes me want to throw up.

His comments about the first season, the young players and the two cup semis are cobblers too, I suppose?

He came to us with the same idea but we were bleeding chips left, right and centre. He is right in that he nearly got us to Wembley proper but we could seriously have reached a whole host of semis or finals and gone down under him. I want silverware but am not prepared to get relegated alongside that.

I am not yet sure what type of gambler Koeman is. He's currently shuffling the pack.

Suffice to say, for an average lower league professional player with a questionable managerial record, that Martinez is a multi millionaire shows how ridiculous the game has become.

We know what years 2 and 3 brought but there was something there, surely?

Should've been sacked pre the derby, which predictably became a massacre and obviously before the semi. We should've won it even with him. It's typical Everton.

Very bored with the 'last British team in Europe' line, so what? Is that an achievement? Fucking idiot.

And the constant insistence that we had a good away record – complete lie, we drew most of them.

Man's a fool. Don't ever come back. He basically ruined us.

Nevertheless, I've got some great memories of that first season – Oviedo baby scoring the winner at Old Trafford for one. Somehow over the last 20 or so years we've always not been able to make that last serious step. Maybe some real investment after finishing fifth in 2014 might have really moved us and shown Martinez to be a hero.

It was the same story really at different times under Moyes and earlier with Joe Royle and Howard Kendall Mk 2 – remember the board's refusal to sanction the signing of Dion Dublin leading to his resignation. There is one constant presence in all of this!

I just like to see fair play, his criticism is/was way over the top for what actually happened. There were positives as well as negatives in the 3 years that never get mentioned.

Since when is getting to two semi-finals success? Every time I see the words Martinez and Everton in the same sentence, I cringe with embarrassment.

The man is and always will be a deluded tit, a fraud and a conman.

He got me straightaway with his words about Evertonians demanding/deserving success and to be challenging for trophies... started to lose me when he listed his so called 'achievements'... before making me pull a right disapproving smacked-arse face like Nurse Ratched when he said 'his' players (like Stones, Rom and Ross) have taken us "to another level".

That is how you give a good interview, Ron.

Having been hammered in Kiev others, including Rom, Seamus, Bainesy and Jags, went public saying that we then staved off relegation by winning 10 points in May by utilising the "old Everton playing style". We know lads. We watched you, and it was good to see at last.

His appointment probably ain't Kenwright's most serious "error of judgement" (I'm being kind with that term, it's Christmas after all) but never can anyone outside EPL football management have ever had a lifetime's Christmas's at once like Martinez, courtesy of Bill "What? A Chairman?!!!" Kenwright. Every penny of his compo should have been paid by Kenwright if he has any notion of being a Toffee. He'd still be a multimillionaire after the sale to Moshiri after all.

You were never an Everton manager, never an Everton supporter; the only person you fooled during your dismal tenure was that drama queen Bill Kenwright.

In his defence, he actually wanted the best for Everton. Unfortunately he didn't have a fucking clue how to go about doing that – although he believed he did – without realizing the majority of people operate in the real world and not Martinezland.

Never have I ever been so insulted by a manager of Everton football club in terms of utter verbal diarrhoea, on a daily basis, a bullshitting fantasist who would fit in quite perfectly in the corridors of Westminster.

Ronald Koeman may not be the answer long term but his honesty has given me belief again. Tuesday night at Goodison may just be the start of getting my mo-jo back after being scarred by that fraud.

His first season was great, even though we were embarrassing at the Emirates in the FA Cup, but he just didn't follow it through.

He seemed to lose his bottle, he had balls the first season, he went after the win all the time, but he lost himself in philosophies and all that crap.

I'd have loved Martinez to have carried on his first season with the same sort of things the next few seasons. Martinez always spoke highly of the Blues, unlike some!

Anyways, unfortunately he wasn't good enough, and we move on.

He did have a good record in cup competitions. I never felt like we would win a trophy under Moyes. We came pretty close in a few competitions in a relatively short time under Martinez. Unfortunately it came completely to the detriment of league form where we were tactically clueless when teams sat back and defended against us.

Bobby was allowed to put his side of the divorce forward having 'managed' Belgium to a decent spin of results.

A deeply flawed, idealistic guy. People say he 'got' Everton and Evertonians, well maybe but I was never his man. Even trying to balance the tenure, his abdication of accountability was scurrilous, something I cannot get over.

International footy may suit him as the scrutiny is never as deep. Could he manage a side to 6/7 wins on one tournament with a fair wind. Yes, he could.

Never an Everton manager.

Sadly Roberto, I stopped bothering to listen. The more that you talked, the less that you delivered, the drizzle returned, but you wanted me to believe that the sun was shining brightly. It wasn't, it was just another disappointment.

As with your predecessor, I'm glad that you have gone.

There are things that both of you did that I love, there were far, far, far too many that I never did, never could.

Learn Roberto, learn.

Less is more.

Also the comments about the young players are a total joke. I think Stones was better when he first broke into the squad. His Man City move is becoming a bit of a nightmare after playing like a 'Martinez ' defender.

Has Lukaku improved much since we first got him? Still can't trap a ball.

Lastly Barkley, Martinez encouraged the mistakes as a young player, to learn from them. By the looks of it, he hasn't. His game is full of mistakes which should of been stamped out then, but it seems he was never taken to task on them.

My opinion of Roberto is that he seemed a genuine person, probably very likeable and possibly too soft for the job at EFC. It remains to be seen what Mr Koeman can do remedy the situation.

What is clear though, in my opinion, is that Martinez did love Everton as a club, I think he really cared. All he's doing is saying he tried and enjoyed managing Everton.

Be grateful for small mercies, though because if Kenwright had his way, that fucking imbecile would still be here. Still nice to see him talking complete and utter shite as per usual...

Oh, thanks, Bob, for making us the last British team to be knocked out of Europe – it completely slipped my mind that.

All the managers and all the money spent in the Premier League era and in the glory days of the '80s and still only Kendall ('85, '86 and '87) has achieved it since we went to three points for a win. Harvey didn't with a League Champions side.

Also, he won more than 20 league games in a season. Only Kendall and has also achieved that since the Cat. So, no, most of you are talking more bollocks than Martinez.

I'd sum him up as a erratic manager. Capable of greatness, but too flawed and stubborn to be able to maintain it for any consistent period of time.

I think he'll get a job in Spain at some point and have far more success there.

I came to the conclusion last season that Roberto would make an absolutely fantastic youth development coach, and still think that this could be his best vocation in football.

I'm watching Guardiola closely, because I'm not sure it's easy to implement such a style on seasoned professionals, and feel it's something that's got to be taught from a very early age.

His Munich side were far more pragmatic, especially with Alonso and his range of passing.

So I expected to see an even more pragmatic Pep at Man City. But he's appearing to be just as stubborn as Roberto. It's going to be an interesting watch...

I know where season 4 was taking us... in fact, just about now, we would be looking for a new manager going into a derby.

When stating the FACTS don't forget to use ALL of them... the whole story.

A pity it all petered out because we looked a really top side for most of that season. I still can't understand what went wrong, but that is the ups and down of being an Evertonian.

Although just to pedantically correct some of the posts above, Martinez's first season wasn't the fabulous quantum leap some are remembering. The first half was good, the second - not so much, with the wheels coming off almost completely after the first of his derby thrashings which was very painful. The Arsenal win the sole highlight in my view, but characteristically showing failure to push on straight after this performance.

The clues for his future were set in his first season. We actually didn't finish a million miles higher from the previous season, and for me, having seen trophies at Goodison, and even a Champions League qualification from his predecessor, it doesn't go down as a "great" season by any measure.

But with respect to the interview, the thing that REALLY annoyed me were the comments by so-called "experts" (Jermaine Jenas) which just regurgitated second hand, mythical soundbite comments that do not stand up to scrutiny at all.

Two that stood out were along the lines of him performing beyond the wildest dreams of Wigan, when, granted he won the FA Cup, but both Paul Jewell and Steve Bruce performed consistently better than him in the League. Wigan were actually a fairly solid Premier League team for a number of years before Roberto Martinez took over. In my book no FA Cup win would ever compensate for relegation. and the years since from which Wigan have still not recovered.

The main one though was the statement that he was doing okay "until the Goodison crowd turned on him". Absolutely infuriating!! Let me state to "experts" who watch the odd highlight of Everton games that I attended virtually every single home game and a fair few away whilst Martinez was in charge and the Goodison crowd NEVER turned against him en masse like we have seen at Newcastle and Sunderland and others. A few placards in the last few games long after he should have gone doesn't count.

Let me reiterate this statement for the few posters on here who clearly never attend games and propagate the same myth. He sucked the life out of us and left us apathetic for the most part, and to be honest, was treated far more kindly by the match going fans than his performances deserved.

I also don't think it is a coincidence that Jermaine Jenas trots out another tired old cliche that Ross Barkley may need to move away from Everton to "resurrrect" his career in the same week that paper talk links him with a move to Tottenham.

Why do these people get paid to regurgitate unresearched soundbites out of licence-payer money?

As a Manager, he failed miserably in the end but he gave me personally more glimpses of what could be than any Manager since Kendall in the '80s... sadly he just couldn't deliver. So I guess we can call him names.

As always, the well-paid professional players who either lacked the courage or desire to challenge his opinions and ideas just carry on as normal.

I wanted to like Martinez and see him succeed but his management failures were too many and too big... but I wonder how much he was challenged to change some of his ideas by our wondrous management structure and (some) weak players?

Strangest profession in the world football. Failure is a great success. Ask Benitez, pay-off after pay-off and a new job 2 or 3 days later... ask Allardyce or Mc Claren.

But still a Blue and always will be. God Bless Us All.

You can't deny what he did in his first season even if it was David Moyes team. some of the performances were some of the best football I have ever seen Everton play, he made some bad signings but some have been good as well.

I always thought he needed to make changes to his coaching team and be a bit more open minded to change and be a bit more flexible with tactics.

To sum him up, he could have left a much better legacy; he has the potential to be a very good manager but he needs to take a break and assess his own weaknesses and come back better.

I will watch how he does at Belgium as I always thought he would be a better international manager than club.

Hitler was apparently sweetness and light where dogs were concerned to illustrate in an extreme way (I'm not saying he was Hitler before people get on my case).

So, anecdotally, I'm sure he was very nice when things were going well and people conformed to his way, but there seemed to be another side of him which seemed more than a bit nasty and unforgiving.

His stubbornness, lack of adaptability and inability to accept he got things wrong are HUGE flaws when it comes to managing football teams to win games. I think this is the thing that made things personal for some people when they saw his interviews: it felt quite personally insulting to me at least.

On the whole, that lack of balance (which strangely enough was also the major flaw in his football sides) makes him, in my book at least, not a particularly nice man.

Absolutely agree with you about the Goodison crowd and Martinez. There were the odd murmurs against him, expressed by members of the crowd in conversation with each other, and these grew more common during the second half of last season, post Christmas, when the wheels had well and truly come off. But it never developed into any overt demonstration even after failures in semi-finals etc.

It was nothing like the ranting on here, in which I was also involved. It's as big a myth as the crowd turning on Barkley. It doesn't happen.

Patient lot at Goodison. Always have been, although I can recall the crowd turning on Johnson at the season end one year.

Interestingly, I have known many Managers personally from the '80s onwards – including Colin Harvey (a wonderful man) and Howard Kendall (a great man with a great heart and a great brain). In the past few years, the main contender for me as a man who lacked any form of personality, or indeed any vision beyond himself, was good old Mr Moyes.

But Joe, I know from your posts how much of a Blue you are, and how you articulate that love of the Club, and so it is pertinent at this time of the year that we should look forwards to the New Year(s) so this will be my last post on anything about Mangers from Christmas Past.

God Bless Tiny Tim and All Blues.

See you Monday at Goodison either via your seat at Goodison or armchair or in spirit – Up The Blues.

Unfortunately what he managed to do in his relatively brief tenure was to expose the weaknesses of his players on an individual and collective basis. He seemed to have a sink-or-swim attitude towards football but once his head was under-water he had no idea how to re-surface or reach land.

I wouldn't have him in charge of any group of people; if they were embarked on a dangerous assignment he would end up losing a few members at each hazardous turn. That he would try to explain away the losses as a learning curve or a necessary experience and point to the survivors as being alive due to his brave philosophy and judgement – means he is a narcissist who has no agenda except his own.

His legacy has been plain to see and up until last Tuesday, I didn't think we'd see the proper Everton return for a whole lot longer. Perhaps he was let down by certain members of the squad, but a man with only one crazy plan shouldn't be listened to for very long.

Unfortunately some of our younger team members still have his messages ingrained in their brains and it will take a good while longer for them to realise that they need to throw out much of what he preached and return to a hard-work first and then play your football type philosophy.

I admit that I was taken in by his positive outlook and dearly wanted to see his Everton team going toe-to-toe with all and sundry, but the experience was like eating a fancy cake, great to look at when first out of the box but the more you ate the worse it tasted and the after effects lingered for far longer than you would like.

The team started performing to the way they wanted to play when we looked in danger of going down. I also have it on good authority, that they kicked off at half-time in the semi-final versus Man Utd, and played their own game in the second half.

Martinez had me believing in his first season that better things were coming our way but ultimately he failed to deliver. I went completely against him when he restored Howard to the team after Robles had done much better, in my opinion, than Tim.

I do not miss him, and I missed Moyes like a boil on my backside. As George says, he had no personality whatsoever, was overpaid and is proving how good he is since he left Everton. His talent (?) was massively overrated, but his bank manager was massively overjoyed.

Excellent stuff.

I criticised Martinez almost incessantly when he was at the helm, but have first hand experience of his warmth as a human being – I bumped into him in town and he made my grand kids feel as if they were the only people in the city.

Roberto had a dream and like many of us he, unfortunately, lived to see it crushed.

Not the greatest manager we have had, but a warm gentle man, especially with kids – which makes him top banana in my book.

We sometimes (nearly always) forget that the managers we berate for not bringing us the success we crave, are human beings too.

Your posts serve as a little reminder.

Good stuff fella.

It's like Mourinho not accepting he was a prick in the manner in which he treated his female physio. Some times in life you need to stand up and say "I was wrong and I'll put this right."

Everton ought to keep Martinez up at night but I bet he sleeps like a baby. One word: deluded.

I recall the staff at Goodison and Finch Farm saying that he was a breath of fresh air and that the "Bring Me Sunshine" Christmas video would not have been allowed under Moyes.

He did indeed appear to be a likeable man but his managerial skills were sadly lacking.

Some very good posts on here.

His stubbornness was his downfall. He stood alone on the touchline, never consulting his assistants; he isolated players who dared to criticise his methods.

His verbal diarrhea eventually just rubbed salt into the wounds for me. We never really got the full story from Eto'o or Distin.

A friend of mine is close to a former player who knew many of the staff at Finch Farm (can't give his name for obvious reasons) and towards the end of that first season, the senior players were calling him a "bullshitter". He had begun to lose some players during that run-in. The 72 points could so easily have been more, as the momentum from the win over Arsenal (which closed the gap between us) was lost in subsequent poor defensive displays.

Perhaps international management will suit him. The players will probably enjoy his bull for a short period at a time. He has the best chance to get success, as his pool of players is mind-bogglingly good. Cup competitions seem to be his forte, so perhaps he will do well.

We'll all have our particular take on him as an individual but, in the final analysis, I just don't like him for taking the club backwards several years and leaving it in a state that Koeman is now expending time and money to rectify.

I also met Colin and Howard and in terms of their flaws, I think Colin genuinely IS a nice man by any definition and lacked the necessary ruthless streak (in an unemotional, logic-only driven way that we seem to see in Koeman, which is not at all the same thing as spite). I won't put a name to Howard's obvious flaw out of respect to him, except to say that it was more a personal tragedy that makes the impact on his football career unimportant in comparison. Still my hero.

Moyes is – paradoxically – interesting. Without any direct evidence, my impression of him is that he is for the most part an intensely private individual who is nevertheless in the public eye and therefore doesn't show himself, with consequent results. I don't think you can accuse him of having no passion; I saw plenty from him on the touchline over his tenure.

Out of all these, Martinez is the only one whose problems manifest in transferring blame to others, and denying the obvious that people see with their own eyes. The term for this is of course, "Gaslighting", which is actually defined as a form of psychological abuse, and really does get people's backs up, which may explain the personal animosity.

Anyway, one day I should come down to that watering hole of yours that you talk about George for a pre-match pint, I'd like that.

See you – figuratively at least – under the lights on Monday.

The second one however, will send chills down the spine of every Evertonian who watched the game – Liverpool 4-0 just before the Cup semi-final. It could literally have finished 7 or 8-0. The Liverpool manager 'felt sorry' for an Everton side in a Merseyside Derby!!!

Martinez shone brightly for about 4 months... then fizzled out like a cheap firework. He left behind a broken and divided squad. That's not all his fault though, the players also need to take a look at themselves. The pay-off is irrelevant, the Chairman gave him that ridiculous contract.

We had tried a Moyes style a make do and play to the strengths sort of management, which with the money spent on players was a logical way to go about it but with no silverware.

I think we tend to underestimate the achievements in the league that Moyes managed with his restricted transfer budget, Martinez had a very tough job to match Moyes in the league when he took over, almost on par with Moyes following Ferguson.

I won't ramble on about the record first season, a good run in the Europa or coming very close to a FA Cup last season to his credit.

If he lost the players last season it was probably the defenders that started the rot in relations, although there hasn't been much said since by the players to the detriment of Martinez. With his mantra of score more than the opposition it was the defenders that caught all the flack. Baines and Jags both lost their England places, if I had been a defender I wouldn't have been happy about our style.

Ultimately he failed because he attempted to play teams off the park when our players were not best suited to that style, so in that respect he was to blame.

Moving forward, he is now very lucky that he does not need to worry about defensive training as his Belgium team are all very good defenders at clubs where they are trained to be so, allowing him to be as frivolous as he was whilst here but with none of the consequences.

He is a very lucky man who has used that luck to make himself very wealthy. He will never be a great club manager because his philosophy is fatally flawed.

I have to go back to 1982 and Rush scoring 4 to remember the same level of derby humiliation. The Gerrard hat-trick one doesn't reach that level.

The fact Martinez did it twice in his short run and that the second one should have been a much worse scoreline shows his ineptitude as no fluke.

That second one is probably the lowest I have felt as an Evertonian in a long long time.

However, all of that is just history now, and that is what it should remain. There is no point holding grudges in life, so, wish him the best of luck in the future and if he ever wants to come back as a fan then he should be welcomed warmly.

1) Roberto was a decent dancer. We hadn't had one before.

He lost me completely when he went after our Bainsey publicly. Unbloodyforgivable.

After his first season with us I thought I'd been proved correct although there had been a few warning signs in particular Southampton and Liverpool, away.

After the piss-poor second season, I thought he should be given the benefit of the doubt and the third season would tell us which was the real Martinez. Well, it certainly did that and I thought that at any other club he would have been sacked by December. But he wasn't and gradually sucked the life out of the players and fans.

Nice guy? He sacked most of the backroom medical team and forced out Distin and Eto'o. The players were patently unfit: we couldn't defend, or attack, corners or free-kicks.

He said we didn't practice corners as we never scored from them: as we conceded so many from them the logic would have been to practice defending them. We didn't do that, either.

Definitely the worst manager since Walker. He'd have taken us down without a doubt.

We stopped listening to him long before he left because what he said bore no relation to reality. He didn't think we were defensively weak? If so, he was the only one in Europe.

It was clear to the whole world that his methods weren't working in his second season but did he change? Not one bit, which shows him to be either arrogant, incompetent or stubborn, or a combination of all three, no matter how nice he is to children.

It will take some years to recover from his legacy, and the missing 㾶 million he trousered won't help that; I just hope Koeman is the man for the job.

We haven't seen one display of decent football for 90 minutes from our new highly paid manager so far... let us be graceful, rather than always kicking the can as hard as we can.

At a guess it seems the only people who can't get over it are those that backed the lame duck well beyond the patience of the majority but it is never easy admitting you get it wrong.

What I would like to say in his defense is: he awakened the club from a long coma that came to be in last few years of Moyes; he had ambition for the club to put it back where it belongs and I have to say some of the football in that first season was just sublime!!!

And I remember chatting to a local in a bar in Singapore and he came out and said Everton were the most exiting team to watch that season!!!

Shame it didn't work out; he had the right idea but did not have the tools to do the job.

I was shocked and dumbfounded when Koeman came in and declared Everton only 70% fit to even start the season. That is my lasting impression of Roberto.

Did we ever stand a chance with him, no matter who we signed? I think not. He just makes it up as he goes along.

Before we were relegated a 2nd division Liverpool side took us for a 4 nil drubbing at Goodison in the F.A cup.Notts County hit us for 4 at Goodison never mind Liverpool.

Every manager of recent decades has come in for slagging.We have stuttered on the brink of relegation a few too many times.I hope that they do not go down during the remainder of my life time.

Koeman is untested really so lets just wait and see.

IMO, John Stones will be the 'stone' that will bury Guardiola!

Sadly, I cannot erode my miserable memories of you.

"'The last seven weeks were very difficult." try being a fan Bob.

"'The disappointment was that I didn't get to finish a long-term project." No disappointment from me,

"'Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong." No shit Sherlock,

"'You don't survive seven years in the Premier League if you don't know how to coach defensive play." WHAT!!! ... Followed by:

"'Do I enjoy defending? Of course, because it gives you the platform to attack."

Don't know whether to laugh or cry...

On the bench today, wasn't he? That's ahead of the U23s?

Wigan could be in Div 1 next season – he likes to leave a legacy doesn't he – demolishes foundations and reaps rewards. That's football all over.

Let's not forget Moyes put the building blocks in. A little luck we could have won a cup under Martinez. Hope it works with Belgium for him. It was time to move on. Oh yes, with the 㾶 million cheque as well.

I think he'll make a good international manager though. His players will come to him with good fitness levels from their respective club teams and there's only so much damage you can do to a player when you see them a few weeks a year.

At times under him we were literally unplayable, for example when we demolished Arsenal 3-0. We just always struggled to beat the bus parking teams. Cup football suits him much better.

Cliff Britton was manager in both games, not a bad manager at all, but a manager who was given very little to spend.

In the running for the worst manager we have ever had is Howard Kendall Mk III; however, he is also in the running for the best manager we have ever had.

We did play in front of very low crowds away from home during our three seasons in Division Two, the lowest being at Notts County on 5th March 1953 when the gate was 7,529. The lowest at Goodison was 10,829 versus Fulham also in March 1953.

Everton's lowest attendance for a top-flight game during that period was 15,561 for a game against Huddersfield Town in March 1955, which Everton won 4-0.

Everton's average home attendance ranged from circa 32,000 to 46,000 for that period in history.

I can't find a game against Notts County at Goodison where the attendance was less than 32,000 during that period but sub 20,000 gates in the 1980s did occur twice. The only Notts County game at Goodison that I haven't got an attendance figure for is a friendly game in January 1951 when Everton won 3-2.

New Year time 1983 when 13,000 hardy souls showed for one of the most boring games in the blues history. A 0-0 stalemate against Coventry City. "Kendall Out!" was the cry from the Gwladys street.

Somehow out of the darkness of that day, more so than the Oxford league cup tie of legend, the Renaissance of the club was quite extraordinary and the trophies piled up in the next few years.

Due to unforeseen circumstances involving our unruly, vicious neighbours, things took another turn and EFC have been trying to regain their status ever since.

Last evening a team of mercenaries in red got away with the points but one day it will turn. Though last night's game doesn't indicate a reversal of fortune any time soon, it could happen sooner than we all may think. It's coming...

The friendly against Notts County, which Patrick refers to, included a very unusual penalty for Everton. One player went up to take the penalty, he just rolled if forward a couple of feet and another player ran forward and slammed it into the net. One of the players was Harry Potts, can't recall the other player, possibly Eddie Wainwright.