Biggus, you will hopefully have noticed that I have refrained from commenting on posting style for quite some time. It generally improves the climate on here if we all make that effort.

Roberto Martinez - he has no doubt made an impression as the Everton manager. I too like what I hear from him in interviews and articles. He comes across as a very like-able person with great knowledge and passion for football. I think he needs a couple of more seasons where he does well at Everton before a big club will be really interested.

he's a candidate but i'm still not convinced. there are a lot of managers who've done well with smaller clubs. does he have the ego and charisma to control the media and star players?

there are articles suggesting we have a shortlist of martinez, klopp and rodgers as potential wenger replacements.

Definitely one of the most promising managers on the scene right now. Has taken a dull and boring Everton side and really transformed how they play. He comes across quite well on TV as well, you can tell he knows his stuff

kami, I don't think Wenger is leaving this summer but he will be gone in a few years. Definitely worth keeping a close eye on Martinez during that time

Everton weren't dull or boring.

If he can spend money well then he'll have a huge career. Might not get to see much of that at Everton though and will be interesting to see what happens when they lose Lukaku. I like so much about him - the way his sides play, his personality, he is quite flexible tactically....could turn out to be one of the best managers of his generation imo

ludovic van zis wrote:

Everton weren't dull or boring.

They were whenever I saw them

He's a big favorite to succeed Wenger IMO. Which I'd be happy about.

i'll stand up and take notice if everton finish 4th ahead of us. that would be a huge achievement. finishing ahead of spurs and united is pretty good in and of itself.

JazzG wrote:

ludovic van zis wrote:

Everton weren't dull or boring.

They were whenever I saw them

90% of the time they were.

They played outdated hoofball with occasional good passing from the likes of Pienaar, Arteta etc

Not too sure about Martinez, I'd go for Klopp or Simeone (at least no big team will spank us with him in charge, that is for sure).

No, Everton played good stuff with their fullbacks.

They played with intensity and were frequently an enjoyable watch because of that. They had some half decent technical players too.

Tactics wrote:

They played outdated hoofball with occasional good passing from the likes of Pienaar, Arteta etc

Yep thats it. Its what Mark Hughes is doing now with Stoke.

Very good manager.

how do you guys think he would've done at United this year?

Claudius wrote:

how do you guys think he would've done at United this year?

Not great but not the shambles that Moyes has come up with. Last summer would have to have been very different. There is a clearing out job needed at United and Moyes bottled that. He should have fucked some of the old dead wood last summer. Made a statement. Hard to know if Martinez would have done that but he wasn't afraid to let Fellaini go and he replaced him with a player more suited to his style for far less money.

Martinez appears to have approached his Everton team with something resembling a plan which you can hardly say about Moyes.

Whether United would have fared any better in acquiring the kind of midfield players Martinez likes than they did with acquiring players for Moyes isn't clear, but I can't imagine United would be any worse off with him at the helm.

The true test of Martinez will come next season when he experiences the UCL.

Pepe LeFrits wrote:

Martinez appears to have approached his Everton team with something resembling a plan which you can hardly say about Moyes.

Whether United would have fared any better in acquiring the kind of midfield players Martinez likes than they did with acquiring players for Moyes isn't clear, but I can't imagine United would be any worse off with him at the helm.

Without wanting to take this off topic about Man Utd, but I think that Moyes was behind the cue ball from day 1, he was set up to fail.
You have the massive spectre of Fergie looking down on you from every wall and then the massive incestuous ego's like Giggs undermining you from below, ready to take over at his fall.
I don't think Martinez or indeed anyone could have succeeded.

Clrnc wrote:

The true test of Martinez will come next season when he experiences the UCL.

Eh? So you think Everton will finish above us?

Clrnc wrote:

The true test of Martinez will come next season when he experiences the UCL.

Claudius wrote:

Clrnc wrote:

The true test of Martinez will come next season when he experiences the UCL.

Are you Dules in disguise Clrnc?

He thoroughly spanked Wenger tactically. That seems to be the norm these days though, so it may not say too much about his pedigree as a manager.

I didn't think Everton were particularly impressive.

Makes it even more embarrassing for us though.

Look people these are the facts-
We are Arsenal we deserve the best manager available.
We are controlled by a bunch of wankers who know nothing about football and rely on Wenger for everything, when he goes he'll tell them who to appoint- Probably one of his weird obscure friends.
The board are so cheap they will probably just appoint Steve Bould.

Everton's plan was brilliant for playing against us, and they were very good at executing that plan IMO.

As you say- Any decent team with a tactically aware manager.......

We have done well when Wenger seems to have specifically made a point of being more defensive though. I think that was the case at Bayern away, Dortmund away, Man U at home, and Man City at home (first half mainly). That should be our default mode for most away matches though, and it clearly isn't. It just seems too much for him to combine the defensive solidity while also posing a potent attacking threat when playing better teams.

Too much is being made of tactics. You generally win or lose games because of how sharp your players are individually. Against Everton our players were bricking it playing another big away game and were terrible so we lost.

ludovic van zis wrote:

Too much is being made of tactics. You generally win or lose games because of how sharp your players are individually. Against Everton our players were bricking it playing another big away game and were terrible so we lost.

So it's not really Wenger's fault.

When we win of course he will be lauded.

You can blame Wenger for not dropping Mertesacker in January. Or for selling Gervinho without replacing him.

The first one is a critical Wenger flaw that his haters have never caught on to: He stops being proactive when the team is doing well.

ludovic van zis wrote:

The first one is a critical Wenger flaw that his haters have never caught on to: He stops being proactive when the team is doing well.

That's spot on. It's the main problem I have with him. You almost wished we had lost a couple of back to back games in january to force his hand in the transfer market.

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2014/04/07/everton-3-0-arsenal-everton-maintain-their-challenge-for-fourth-place/

The video and article showing how he outsmarted us on the day and we had no response to it.

ludovic van zis wrote:

The first one is a critical Wenger flaw that his haters have never caught on to: He stops being proactive when the team is doing well.

That is why he never was able to hit the heights as a manager that he was capable of, always been a reactive manager. On the other hand Fergie had money to spend but made sure he kept every single one of his players on their toes and if he wanted a player he'd overpay to get him in. He didn't care if he overpaid, if he wanted a player he made sure he got him. Nobody cares that he wasted money on Berbatov or Veron, shit like that happens but you could see Wenger not sleeping at night over something like that.

Wenger liked his tag of being a bargain hunter and made sure he would never overpay for a player. Too many times we have been left looking like fucking mugs because of our antics. Funnily enough look at our dealing with Liverpool, tried to get Alonso and Liverpool would of sold for £15m but we fucked them around and left it too late, he suddenly looked a player worth twice that. Then again last summer, we should of put up an extra £10m and Liverpool would of sold him to us, again we fucked about and now he looks a player worth a world record fee. All because the manager doesn't have enough conviction to just the fucking players he wants.

ludovic van zis wrote:

The first one is a critical Wenger flaw that his haters have never caught on to: He stops being proactive when the team is doing well.

Who are these people who haven't 'caught on'? I think most on here were pretty adamant we needed reinforcements in January waaaaay back in the season for instance, even though we were doing well.

He's talking about dropping Mertesacker.

@[deleted]
I wasn't talking about transfers. Transfers involve many external factors, happen away from our eyes and in general seem luck based.

I'm talking about what Wenger actually does with the team, stuff we can see. When we're in a pinch he is, in my opinion, brilliant. Remember when he brought Benayoun in out of nowhere for the Spurs game? He tries different things and they almost always work.

When we're doing well however he's very afraid of disturbing the team. Which i get. I mean, the worst thing a manager can do is make his team play worse by interfering and it's very easy to make unecessary changes when you make changes often. You at least keep performances steady and you're doing a decent job. But in the few times we've genuinely challenged for the title in the past 10 years we've needed Wenger to take risks and be brilliant like he can be but instead he just played it safe. We've never been favorites in the past 10 years but we could have nicked it maybe once if he took some risks.

I see what you mean. I still disagree though!
Wenger relying on his senior players down the stretch is what he has always done, and there are plenty of us who have been on his back for it over the years. There are also many who have called out for changes in the team, despite us doing well, to rest players and keep more players in the mix. He also often forces himself to rely on too few players by always leaving us short somewhere. For instance, the only reason he has had to play Giroud too much is because he fucked up last summer.

ludovic van zis wrote:

The first one is a critical Wenger flaw that his haters have never caught on to: He stops being proactive when the team is doing well.

Don't worry Ludo. Some of us caught on to him 5 years ago.
Also risable is your assertion that too much is made of tactics, we are talking about the game at the highest level.