Martinez on brink of going from future Barcelona boss to Goodison Park footnote

The prefix seems to have been changed. In the heady days two years ago, when Everton surged into fifth place, playing intoxicating, attacking football that showed ambition and intelligence alike, it was "future Barcelona manager Roberto Martinez".

Now the perception is radically different. The Spaniard has become "under-pressure Roberto Martinez". The Nou Camp does not beckon so much as unemployment. It is a stark shift in fortunes, one that even Martinez may have acknowledged.

Some events are so extreme that they can burst even the biggest bubble of positivity. The Everton manager has a range of adjectives, usually superlatives he deploys with great enthusiasm. Wednesday's 4-0 Merseyside derby defeat prompted him to extend his range, to abandon his usual fondness for branding events or players unique, incredible or phenomenal to adopt a policy of brutal candour. For perhaps the only time, he used the words disastrous, embarrassing and horrible.

As the optimist becomes a convert to realism, Martinez must head to Wembley for Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final aware he is in a precarious position. Loyal as Everton chairman Bill Kenwright is to his managers, and whatever the new majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri has said, his job is under threat. It has to be when such a large proportion of the fans want him to go. Defeat by Manchester United this weekend would remove the remaining chance of salvaging something from a season that, like Martinez’s rhetoric, has promised more than it has delivered.

Misplaced as some of his optimism appears, Martinez deserves better than some of the vitriolic attempts at character assassination that linger in cyberspace. The accusation that he is a fraud is simply wrong.

What he is, however, is a manager who is suffering because he has failed to address the fatal flaw in his make-up. There are others, ones whose early exploits suggest they are bound for the top but who remain unwilling or unable to improve. Those who progress year by year, like Mauricio Pochettino, are rare exceptions.

Stubbornness is a prerequisite in the profession but it is also a problem that prevents many from realising their potential. Martinez need only look at Wednesday’s conquerors for proof. Like him, Brendan Rodgers is a gifted coach with a host of ideas and some of the attributes to manage a top club. Just as with Martinez, however, the Northern Irishman’s teams did not defend well enough.

Rodgers needed someone to filter out his worst ideas, whether tactically or in the transfer market. Martinez requires a defensive coach, just as Kevin Keegan did at Newcastle. Manchester City wanted Mark Hughes to hire an elite coach to join his backroom team but he remained wedded to the clique of Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzwiecki. David Moyes excelled at the basics, of engendering organisation and spirit and a work ethic, but lacked the imagination to progress further.

Martinez has that imagination, but undermines his progressiveness with an enduring sniffiness about the fundamentals. He seems to think goals scored in open play are more virtuous which, even if true, should not deflect from the inarguable truth: they count for no more than those bundled in off someone’s backside from a corner. A disdain for dead-ball situations is reflected in a reluctance to practise them.

When Everton’s players asked why - as Leon Osman recounted in his autobiography - Martinez’s assistant Graeme Jones replied: “How many do you have to defend in a game? Three? So why would we spend two hours standing around to defend three set-pieces when we could work on moving the ball?”

It is an illogical argument; those three moments often deprive Everton of three points. They have carried on conceding at corners, to Crystal Palace’s Scott Dann and West Brom’s Salomon Rondon and Watford’s Jose Holebas. That laxness extends to the crossed ball in general. West Ham scored three times from crosses in 12 March minutes, Liverpool two in three on Wednesday from the second phase of set-pieces.

Martinez’s Everton have become proof that it is possible to have good defenders without possessing a good defence. Individually, Phil Jagielka, John Stones, Seamus Coleman, Leighton Baines, the precocious Brendan Galloway and even the impetuous Ramiro Funes Mori (his reprehensible lunge at Divock Origi notwithstanding) are all fine players.

Yet with the chaos at the back, Everton have the sixth worst defensive record in the division. Two years ago, they had the third best, but they also had a defence that could run on autopilot for a while after Moyes’ departure, even with Coleman and Baines reinvented as the Goodison Park Cafu and Roberto Carlos.

Martinez trusted in Stones, recognising his talent. He deserves credit for that. Yet, given his focus on technicians, there are legitimate questions about whether he is a good enough judge of goalkeepers and centre-backs. He has often recruited well in the midfield positions and, while his record with strikers is rather more mixed, Everton should at least double their money on Romelu Lukaku. His major centre-back coup was Ashley Williams, taken to Swansea in 2008.

Since then, he has brought in Antolin Alcaraz (not once, but twice), Gary Caldwell, Antonio Amaya, Steve Gohouri, Adrian Lopez, Ivan Ramis and Funes Mori; some were acquired because of their prowess on the ball and some because they lurked in the bargain basement, but all were too capable of making a mistake.

He has rarely chosen to commit much of his budget to stoppers. Martinez resolved to sign a goalkeeper in January 2015, decided not to in the next three transfer windows and Tim Howard was allowed to decline in the team before being replaced by Joel Robles. Everton, the club of Neville Southall and Nigel Martyn, are accustomed to rather better.

It is that recklessness, that unwillingness to concentrate on solidity, to prioritise pragmatism, even temporarily, that puts Martinez in peril. Unlike some limited managers who reach their glass ceiling, he has shown he can envision and implement a brand of football that suits the most gifted players and the most decorated clubs.

He has shown a capacity at times to secure notable scalps, which is one of the few reasons to tip Everton to win on Saturday. But without an acceptance of the need to change, without a concerted effort to avoid the concession of so many unnecessary goals, Martinez will join the ranks of the managers who were touted for greatness but never came close. The future Barcelona manager could become the former Everton manager.