1878

You know that moron that manages our club? Yeah, he has to go.

I haven't done a blog post in ages, so I apologise for that, but I thought I have to address this as I don't think we've brought it up enough on our blog. We mention it more over on our Twitter.

Anyway,  the fool that manages Everton Football Club must leave. I don't care whether he's sacked or leaves on his own accord, just get him gone. For those who don't know who the baffoon at the managerial position is (I'd be supried if you didn't); it is Roberto Martinez.

A Summary Roberto Martinez's Everton History

Now, Mr. Martinez joined Everton back in the 2013/14 season, after David Moyes sadly left to manage Manchester United.

We were unsure if he was the right successor to Moyes, but immediately we gained hope about the future with Roberto, as Bill Kenwright claimed, "Almost his first words to me were: I'll get you in the Champion's League."

The joy we had when we heard that! Bobby then brought in class players, such as Romelu Lukaku and Gerard Deulofeu, on loan, then went on to have a very successful season, gaining 5th place in the Premier League, securing Europa League football the following season. It wasn't Champion's League, but hell, we were on the rise. We had got into Europe, flying high with the "big" clubs!

The following season, the 2014/15 season, was where it started going downhill for Everton and their manager. We bought a few new players, including Romleu Lukaku on a permanent deal, but lost Gerard Deulofeu, who was a great player for us in the previous season, as he went on loan to Sevilla.

Despite Geri leaving, we wanted a successful season and wanted to hopefully qualify for the Champion's League, like Martinez promised. Let's be honest, it didn't go down like that, did it? We were knocked out the Europa League in the quarter-finals, and we got to 11th in the league... Considering our aim was a top 4 spot, we did extremely poorly.

Well, this season, the 2015/16 season, has been, to put it bluntly, absolutely awful. Dreadful. Martinez's worst season with the toffees yet. The season started and we thought we could bounce back from last season and try once more to get that exciting Champion's League quaification. Well, let me explain how this season has been Martinez's worst season at Everton.

We started the season with an ambitious mind; we wanted to get somewhere, wanted to challenge the top 4. First few games were okay, working our way through results, almost comfortably in the top 7/8 of the table. The league was so tight to begin with so we always had a chance of getting at least top 5 easily.

We looked relatively strong with Lukaku, Deulofeu and Barkley working together and managing to get Lukaku as one of the top 3 league scorers. New signings Ramiro Funes Mori and Aaron Lennon were performing well. It was all grand for the first few bits of the season.

Picking Favourites

However, come towards the middle of the season, Tim Howard began under-performing, along with John Stones. Everton fans thought, "fair enough, they're out-of-form, the manager will swap the team around for a few games so our top players can have a bit of a rest - Martinez is not an idiot." Well, how wrong were we!?

Roberto seemed to be picking the players he prefered, picking favourites, over the players in-form. Tim Howard, dubbed "Starjump Nonce" for a while, wasn't moved from the starting position, despite Everton's number two, Joel Robles, performing superbly in the Capital One Cup.

Joel continued his form in the cup until he was eventually put into the starting lineup, (and has been there ever since) but fans were more relieved that they had a goalkeeper with a better ability in goal, rather than being thankful towards Roberto for changing the lineup as it was a long overdue change that had to be made.

Being Knocked out of the Capital One Cup

Speaking of the Capital One Cup, Roberto Martinez also managed to piss the fans off in this competition, not just the league. The semi-finals against Manchester City. A great chance for Everton to gain some silverware after 21 years. The first leg was perfect - a comfortable 2-1 win, fantastic.

The second leg however, didn't have the same glory.We lost 3-1 to quickly explain it, meaning the aggregate score was 4-3 to Manchester City, and we came tumbling out of the cup. Many fans would defend Martinez in this situation though, explaining the referee decisions were appauling, which I'd agree with - but that doesn't mean that Roberto didn't have a part to play. For some reason, Martinez has no ability to hold a lead, in both the league and the cup. Bad tactical decisions and substitutions? Most likely.

Martinez's Substitutions

Actually, whilst we're on it, I'll go in-depth about his substitutions, mainly because it's fresh in my mind after the poor subs Martinez made in the Manchester United game earlier today.

• Firstly - for some strange reason, Martinez feels that he can only make two substitutions in a match. Near enough every game, he only makes two substitutions, which is STUPID considfering that most of the time we need to make three substitutions to have a chance in winning the game. Players can get tired or play badly; Roberto should use the three subs that he has available.

• Another thing - Martinez rarely makes subs before the 75-80th minute. He obviously doesn't realise that substitutes are available to use anytime in the game, so USE THEM BEFORE THE GAME IS PRACTICALLY OVER! Although we can't actually say that considering how late on we score and concede goals, which I will explain more later on.

• One last thing I will mention on the substitutes front - He doesn't use the players he has on the bench. For example, Martinez brought in Oumar Niasse, a striker who cost us £13.5 million, who we'd thought would be a helping-hand to Romelu Lukaku. Instead, Roberto feels Niasse is only useful as a bench-warmer, who occasionally will be brought on for the last 5 minutes of the game. We paid quite a bit of money for this player, and he's not being used. Gerard Deulofeu, a player who was working with Rom and Barkley to get goals and win games, has recently felt a spell on the bench for the toffees, due to Aaron Lennon's good form, which is fair enough. BUT ROBERTO MARTINEZ DOESN'T EVEN BRING HIM ON! Geri is arguably one of our best players - he's skillful, quick, and can supply Rom so he can score, but Deulofeu isn't even being used anymore. Lennon will get tired throughout the game, so bring on the fresh legs of Geri to spice things up a bit. Admittedly, the Spanish winger started the recent Manchester United game, but was taken off for Kevin Mirallas quite early into the second half, despite being one of our best players on the pitch... Bloody Hell...

 Why is he a Bad Manager?

There are many different reasons why Roberto is a bad manager. Certain scenarios in Martinez's game which he can't handle and which are probably the MAIN reasons we're, basically, crap. He is unable to tactically sort them out. I'll explain a few right now.

• The First Scenario: Coming Back From Losing - Let's go back to the Arsenal game to have an example, when we were 0-2 down at half-time. We're losing, so any normal human being would decide to bring on more attacking players to get a goal back to make it at least 1-2, maybe even 2-2 - or if we were lucky 3-2! So, What does Martinez do? Brings on John Stones, a defender. What!? When you want to come back from losing a game, you don't bring on a defender, you bring on an attacker to get the goals. Like I said earlier, Martinez's substitutions are horrendously bad and extremely confusing.

• The Second Scenario: Holding Onto a Lead - Alright, we're going a few of months back for this example, back to the second Chelsea game in the league, which ended 3-3. The first half ended 0-0, but we were 0-2 up in 60 minutes. Just 10 minutes later, it was 2-2. Then we managed to score in the 90th minute, the final minute of the game. It was 2-3, surely we've won, but no, in the 8th minute of added time, Chelsea get one back and it finishes a draw. This has happened WAY too much this season to be unlucky. There is 100% something wrong with the tactics the manager uses late on in the game.

• The Third Scenario: Defending - Defending, just in general, is quite a struggle for Martinez, which is discouraging, considering defending has a MAJOR part to play in not conceding goals. Roberto can not manage to get his defenders to work properly. They make too many mistakes and let too many goals in. Whether that's his fault or the defending coach's, it has to be sorted out. We have the ability to score lots, but we concede lots too.

Despite me just hammering down on Roberto with critisism, I can accept that if there's one thing he's good at, it's developing young talent.

Martinez has lots of talent in Everton's academy and he has brought players like Ross Barkley and John Stones into the first team as young, English talents. He has also brought in young players, such as: Romelu Lukaku and Gerard Deulofeu.

Our young talents are adored by other clubs. You always hear stories about the clubs after Ross Barkley, John Stones and the rest of the young first team squad at Everton.

But the players who aren't always noticed, despite still being upcoming talents, are the players in the Everton U21s, U18s, etc. Harry has done a blog post on a few of the young prospects a couple of months ago - Have a gander here.

Conclusion

Now, I'm not going to lie to you - This isn't it. I could continue to go on about Martinez's flaws, writing for hours on end, even conquering outside of the football, with that video of Roberto dancing to Jason Derulo, or the most recent decision of having these photos promote Chang Beer and Everton... (Probably wasn't Roberto's idea, but it's still embarrising for the club)

Why is that even a thing...

Anyway, to conclude Roberto Martinez needs to go. Simple as that. Not good enough for our club. We currently sit in 12th in the Premier League with a manager who started his managerial career with Everton claiming "I'll get you in the Champion's League," and managed to get us to Europa League and a Capital One Cup semi final in the two years at the club.

Still think our manager is the right man for the job? Well, to finish, I'm going to show you statistics I found, as we all know stats don't lie, and posted on our Twitter about the Spaniard who manages the club. This is his Premier League (from both Wigan Athletic and Everton) record, and it's not pretty.

(Please don't nab the graphic!! Too many people have nabbed it and posted it on their Twitter pages. The original is on our Twitter.)

Are you convinced yet? If you're not, I'm suprised, but send our Twitter (@1878Blog) a tweet explaining why you think Roberto Martinez can manage our club.

Anyway, cheers for reading this blog post, unless you scrolled all the way through it until the end. In which case, no cheers for reading... (is that correct...?)

Sorry it was so long. It's probably the longest thing I've typed in one sitting in my ENTIRE life, let alone just on this blog!

Like I said, give us your thoughts about this situation on our Twitter, and we'll try to be more consistent with the blog posts.

-Rhys Jones