Disagree Hoyle87. It's not just that his style has that glass ceiling, it's that we've had enough of this particular limited footballing style. Swansea and Southampton have managed to combine progress with a footballing identity - some would say because of it - through many divisions. Moyes' record looks good over 11 years, but how many of the last few years could actually have been better for Everton if someone more like Martinez had been in charge? It could be that Moyes actually limited them for the last few years, and who's to say in the next few years that this limiting will trickle down the league from the top six to the whole division? It's all well and good to build foundations, but if you're building them out of mud and everyone around you is building on concrete then the foundations are themselves inadequate and restricting - look at Newcastle, who have lots of players capable of playing good stuff, especially when Cabaye was there, but are clearly constrained by Pardew's near-moronic football thinking.I'm fed up of managers content to make us 'hard to beat' (and harder to watch), to make us 'compact' and 'well-organised', where 'all the players know their jobs' and all of those other patronising euphemisms. I'm fed up with the long ball being considered a legitimate attacking tactic, with all our attacking coming from 'pace on the wings' rather than quality through the middle. I'm fed up with players moving about as freely as if their boots were stitched into the turf, of last-minute goals conceded after 89 minutes of unsuccessful bludgeoning against a simple defensive opposition, of losing the ball from throw-ins, of dreading the weekend arriving for fear of what garbage might be hurled our way this time. If sodding Southampton can do it, then so too can we.
One step at a time guys. We aren't going to become good overnight.
We need Lennon to jump ship so Lambert can move to Celtic.We then need a DoF (preferably one that understands Villa and does not have a love in with previous clubs) to act as a conduit between a clueless board when it comes to football and a (new) set of very good 1st team coaches.Oh and 5 or 6 first team players as well as the 2 newer signings (JO/LK) back to full fitness. Not much required then.
I've still yet to see who you all think is going to bring us this golden ticket to attractive, trophy winning football. We have to stop the rot first.
The point on Moyes 'limiting' Everton over the last few seasons I think is crazy talk. The reason they are doing so well this season is 90% down to the foundations Moyes built, the players who have made the difference this year are not players Martinez has bought for fees (Kone, McCarthy, Alcaraz, Joel), it's the fact that he got lucky with the loan market with Gareth Barry and Lukaku becoming available. How many summers would two players of top 4 quality be available for loan, and both end up at the same club? They weren't even in for Lukaku until the last minute when they realised he looked set to be off to WBA and hijacked the bid.Clearly they have played a different style under Martinez, one the fans consider more attractive, but I don't put their improved results down to that, as I've said above. Let's see how Martinez does next season when Lukaku goes back and they may well struggle to keep Barry as well. He'll most likely have around 10m to spend tops (Moyes average season spend over his tenure there), and I think Martinez will struggle to come above 6th/7th (where Moyes got Everton to the vast majority of his tenure).What I would say is, I'm not one of these fans who is massively concerned by style of football, so that clearly will affect my views in comparison to some others. I've seen Swansea a few times and at times I think they are boring, the possession stats flash up and they've had 70% of the ball, yet I've rarely seen them in the opposition's box or the goalkeeper troubled. I'd rather come 7th playing 'boring' football, than 9th watching a possession game.
Quote from: hoyle87 on April 24, 2014, 09:51:26 PMThe point on Moyes 'limiting' Everton over the last few seasons I think is crazy talk. The reason they are doing so well this season is 90% down to the foundations Moyes built, the players who have made the difference this year are not players Martinez has bought for fees (Kone, McCarthy, Alcaraz, Joel), it's the fact that he got lucky with the loan market with Gareth Barry and Lukaku becoming available. How many summers would two players of top 4 quality be available for loan, and both end up at the same club? They weren't even in for Lukaku until the last minute when they realised he looked set to be off to WBA and hijacked the bid.Clearly they have played a different style under Martinez, one the fans consider more attractive, but I don't put their improved results down to that, as I've said above. Let's see how Martinez does next season when Lukaku goes back and they may well struggle to keep Barry as well. He'll most likely have around 10m to spend tops (Moyes average season spend over his tenure there), and I think Martinez will struggle to come above 6th/7th (where Moyes got Everton to the vast majority of his tenure).What I would say is, I'm not one of these fans who is massively concerned by style of football, so that clearly will affect my views in comparison to some others. I've seen Swansea a few times and at times I think they are boring, the possession stats flash up and they've had 70% of the ball, yet I've rarely seen them in the opposition's box or the goalkeeper troubled. I'd rather come 7th playing 'boring' football, than 9th watching a possession game.I don't think it's such crazy talk. Everton haven't looked likely to really break that Champions' League monopoly since 2005, which was before ourselves and Man City had been taken over and Spurs were having a good old meltdown. With the league as competitive as it is now, with the amounts of money spent, Martinez looks likely to finish above both a club who spent £100m in the summer and the club for which David Moyes has left, the former champions who are now boofing their way to a 38-point swing deficit on Everton, and still has a good chance of finishing above a team who could afford to spend £40m on a single player last summer.Also, I wouldn't call signing two good players lucky, no more than I'd call Moyes' best signings lucky. But of those signings, look at them now - Seamus Coleman has gone from a decent plodder to this airborne Cafu impersonator. Kevin Mirallas, Steven Naismith, Aiden McGeady - these aren't players associated with the Barcelona-ish top levels of the game, yet now look totally comfortable in a style which is more flexible, more entertaining and, so far, more successful. The Everton fans don't just consider his style more entertaining, they consider it to have taken a brake off. This is the real point - however well it did, Moyes' style would never get further because it was so small-time. It imitated the way a particularly unblessed lower league team might play: organisation, rigid in attack and defence, safety-first stuff. Martinez's style is confidence-inducing, front-foot, brave football. Give me that any time.Your Swansea point in some way proves my point, as well, that this somewhat Puritan idea of footballing style (that something fun must also be bad for you) is a totally incorrect premise. Would Swansea be anywhere like where they were if they weren't playing effective football? Their style can be boring or entertaining, but even if it is boring it's a braver way to be boring, and has a higher ceiling on what it can achieve. Nobody has yet addressed my point about Villa - that teams for whatever psychological reason always play at Villa Park as if we're a top four club, and as such we need to play the style best suited to breaking down massed defences at home. Clearly what we've been doing so far doesn't seem to have worked, and what we've been doing so far is Moyes-ball.I happen to find one style more entertaining, but for us it would be more practical to change our style away from anything Moyes would give us and towards the passing style of his successor, and to change immediately.
Quote from: Monty on April 24, 2014, 11:32:16 PMQuote from: hoyle87 on April 24, 2014, 09:51:26 PMThe point on Moyes 'limiting' Everton over the last few seasons I think is crazy talk. The reason they are doing so well this season is 90% down to the foundations Moyes built, the players who have made the difference this year are not players Martinez has bought for fees (Kone, McCarthy, Alcaraz, Joel), it's the fact that he got lucky with the loan market with Gareth Barry and Lukaku becoming available. How many summers would two players of top 4 quality be available for loan, and both end up at the same club? They weren't even in for Lukaku until the last minute when they realised he looked set to be off to WBA and hijacked the bid.Clearly they have played a different style under Martinez, one the fans consider more attractive, but I don't put their improved results down to that, as I've said above. Let's see how Martinez does next season when Lukaku goes back and they may well struggle to keep Barry as well. He'll most likely have around 10m to spend tops (Moyes average season spend over his tenure there), and I think Martinez will struggle to come above 6th/7th (where Moyes got Everton to the vast majority of his tenure).What I would say is, I'm not one of these fans who is massively concerned by style of football, so that clearly will affect my views in comparison to some others. I've seen Swansea a few times and at times I think they are boring, the possession stats flash up and they've had 70% of the ball, yet I've rarely seen them in the opposition's box or the goalkeeper troubled. I'd rather come 7th playing 'boring' football, than 9th watching a possession game.I don't think it's such crazy talk. Everton haven't looked likely to really break that Champions' League monopoly since 2005, which was before ourselves and Man City had been taken over and Spurs were having a good old meltdown. With the league as competitive as it is now, with the amounts of money spent, Martinez looks likely to finish above both a club who spent £100m in the summer and the club for which David Moyes has left, the former champions who are now boofing their way to a 38-point swing deficit on Everton, and still has a good chance of finishing above a team who could afford to spend £40m on a single player last summer.Also, I wouldn't call signing two good players lucky, no more than I'd call Moyes' best signings lucky. But of those signings, look at them now - Seamus Coleman has gone from a decent plodder to this airborne Cafu impersonator. Kevin Mirallas, Steven Naismith, Aiden McGeady - these aren't players associated with the Barcelona-ish top levels of the game, yet now look totally comfortable in a style which is more flexible, more entertaining and, so far, more successful. The Everton fans don't just consider his style more entertaining, they consider it to have taken a brake off. This is the real point - however well it did, Moyes' style would never get further because it was so small-time. It imitated the way a particularly unblessed lower league team might play: organisation, rigid in attack and defence, safety-first stuff. Martinez's style is confidence-inducing, front-foot, brave football. Give me that any time.Your Swansea point in some way proves my point, as well, that this somewhat Puritan idea of footballing style (that something fun must also be bad for you) is a totally incorrect premise. Would Swansea be anywhere like where they were if they weren't playing effective football? Their style can be boring or entertaining, but even if it is boring it's a braver way to be boring, and has a higher ceiling on what it can achieve. Nobody has yet addressed my point about Villa - that teams for whatever psychological reason always play at Villa Park as if we're a top four club, and as such we need to play the style best suited to breaking down massed defences at home. Clearly what we've been doing so far doesn't seem to have worked, and what we've been doing so far is Moyes-ball.I happen to find one style more entertaining, but for us it would be more practical to change our style away from anything Moyes would give us and towards the passing style of his successor, and to change immediately.Ah now, Aiden McGeady is shit (have had the unfortunate experience of watching his depressing Ireland career over many years) and Naismith while having a purple patch is no better. Take Barry, Lukaku, Coleman and Baines out of that side and its bog standard lower mid table (our level). Martinez does seem very flexible in his tactics and play good football. But he made some exceptional signings last summer without whom they would be nowhere. Coleman has improved out of recognition but some of the others were really good players anyway.More than a dose of revisionism has crept in about his reign at Everton I think. He is being lumped in with the MON's out there which is unfair. Moyes could be negative against big teams particularly in big Cup ties. A bit of a tactical neaderthal but it was effective and sustainable I thought. Their points tally speaks for itself over his reign, he didnt have to drastically up wages and transfer fees each year to stand still. He largely bought well, had a very committed bunch of players who on the whole gave everything for him and left the club in a monumentally better place than where he found it. Baines, Coleman, Gibson, Mirallas, Stones, Barkley - thats a good crop of young players with their best days ahead of them.MON on the other hand left us with an overpaid, overfed, mutinous crew and promptly walked five days before the season.All credit to Rodgers and Martinez this season, the sky big four was for all too long left saunter up to their positions in the league table for years. But serious questions have to be asked about Pellegrini, Mourinho, Wenger, Levy and Moyes about how Liverpool and Everton are in the top 4 when really they should be nowhere near it based on resources available to each club. Moyes and Villas Boas are gone. Wenger should be fired in the summer for definite. The other two if they remain potless have had disappointing seasons too and couldnt have too many complaints if they were got rid of in the summer.