The purist was sounding unusually pragmatic. See the words on a page and it might have seemed that Sam Allardyce was speaking, not Roberto Martinez. There was the reference to “soft goals”, to “cheap” concessions, to “defensive intensity”. There was the admission that improvement at the back was a priority.
And yet the conclusion that, to use Martinez’s word, Everton were rectifying it seemed premature. His team had still seen Tottenham score once and hit the woodwork twice on Sunday. Everton were inches from a third consecutive home defeat. Their attitude may have changed, and the introduction of Muhamed Besic was a case of a defensive substitution offering a platform for progress, but it was too soon to argue progress has been made.
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For now, Everton remain the most extreme example of enigmas in the English game. They rank among the best teams to watch but are a source of immense frustration to their fans. They have good defenders — in John Stones’ case, potentially the best centre-half produced in Britain since John Terry and Rio Ferdinand — but not a good defence. They are the third highest scorers in the division, but reside in the wrong half. They have four players, in Romelu Lukaku, Gerard Deulofeu, Ross Barkley and Stones, who may be found at Europe’s elite clubs next season, and others, in James McCarthy and Seamus Coleman, who could attract lucrative offers, and yet their only victories in their last 13 league games have come against the Premier League’s bottom three teams. They have scored 17 goals in six home matches and won just two of them. They have the ability to beat virtually anyone and are beating virtually no one. They stand accused of squandering their talent.
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They have a manager who aims high and deals in superlatives. “We have the opportunity with this team to be something special in the history of Everton,” Martinez said last week. “The next five months will be vital.” But in a season when Chelsea, grievously, and Manchester United, tediously, have underperformed and there is the chance for someone else to finish in the top four, it won’t be Everton. Yet the gifts of the players in their ranks suggests it could have been. With a manager who has won silverware rather more recently than the club — 2013, as opposed to 1995 — there is the opportunity to lift the League Cup, with a semi-final first leg against Manchester City on Tuesday. It is enough to prompt memories of Wigan’s 2013 FA Cup final victory against City, the result that prompted Martinez’s appointment at Goodison Park.
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Yet he lies at the heart of the Everton conundrum. An apostle of attacking football, the stylist with a smile, he is the neutrals’ choice. The partisans are rather more divided. There is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction among the Everton support; underachievement makes it more pronounced. There is the ongoing question of whether Martinez’s quirks are flaws that undermine his fine work.
This is his seventh season of top-flight management. Only in his first at Everton, when they claimed 72 points, have his teams acquired the right sort of consistency. This has been a campaign when a lack of ruthlessness, an inability to defend set-pieces and a general defensive carelessness have come at a cost. Everton lost a lead against Tottenham on Sunday. They have done so in more damning fashion in earlier games. Games against Bournemouth, Norwich and Stoke should have yielded nine points. They produced just two.
It is a moot point if Bournemouth 3 Everton 3 or Everton 3 Stoke 4 is the most Martinez scoreline ever. And yet a manager who has trusted in young talent, who has unveiled a more ambitious style of play and who has forged an attractive team on a limited budget has the capacity to inflict another upset against City. Such is the nature of Martinez’s management and this beguiling Everton team. They are inimitable and in need of the sort of sustained excellence to prove they can be both solid and sublime.
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