Is the potential Everton boss worth all the fuss?
Like a fifteen year old boy who suddenly can’t get hold of his best mate at the same time his girlfriend has stopped answering his calls, I’m led to ask myself am I missing something?
I cannot understand why current Wigan manager Roberto Martinez is so feted and apparently in demand.
Yes I admit that the Spaniard does appear to be incredibly polite, positive and close to saintliness in his demeanour.
However I would like to put forward the case for him not being very good at managing football teams.
Wigan Athletic lost 20 matches last season, yes that’s 20, this in the season when they were supposed to finally demonstrate how far they’ve come as a Premier league side.
Their optimism was fuelled by a run of six wins in eight games at the end of 2011-12 season that secured their Premier League status for another year, literally.
Some of those wins were impressive, away to Arsenal, at home to United, all while attempting to play an attractive brand of football.
This in effect seems to be why the synchronised bowing down at his trademark brown shoes continues at a pace. The fact that he has all the proper footballing principles and seeks to play the game in the “right way”.
Closer inspection shows that he hasn’t perhaps done as well as people think and indeed as he should have done.
Under Paul Jewell in 2005-06 their first year in the Premier League Wigan achieved a total of 51 points and finished tenth, this remains their best ever league position.
The next year they survived on the last day with a victory at Sheffield United and Jewell saw this as his cue to depart.
Chris Hutchings took over initially before a run of six defeats saw him dismissed. Steve Bruce then arrived in a blaze of…well indifference but promptly led the club to a respectable 14th place finish.
The next season they did even better ending the year in eleventh. Bruce then left to join Sunderland and Martinez was handed the role.
His first season saw a sixteenth place finish and a -42 goal difference, one of the worst in Premier League history. He repeated the sixteenth spot the year after and then fifteenth the season before last.
Last season obviously saw relegation and the concession of 73 goals, demonstrating that four years on from his first season in charge his team still had the same problem of not knowing how to defend.
I accept the FA Cup win was a wonderful achievement that will forever be remembered by Latics fans but when it comes down to it was Martinez’s record better than Steve Bruce’s or Paul Jewell’s, neither of whom to my knowledge have been touted as the future of football.
As I said I like Martinez, he’s clearly a lovely bloke but let’s hope that Dave Whelan hasn’t been reading the Barry Fry manual of how to make a sale and done everyone up like a kipper.
Allen Whyte
1 comment