Roberto Martinez recently claimed he is a “tactically flexible manager”, so the question begs: is he? We’ve seen Roberto Martinez managing in the Premier League now for nearly 6 years and we’ve seen him adopt a passing, fluent football approach. But when things get tough, is he “flexible” enough to change his way in order to get a result, or to get the best out of players?
By tactics, I’m not saying when Everton or Wigan have struggled to beat a team with the passing game whether or not they’ve gone for a long ball game. I mean can he amend his principles on the odd occasion or play a different style of game- whether that be more no nonsense defending or increase the amount of crossing and wide play?
We saw evidence of it to an extent at Arsenal last season when Everton produced a very good tactical display to stifle the Gunners and it resulted in Everton getting a point and many plaudits, including from the Arsenal players. “The best team we’ve played at the Emirates so far this season” claimed Wojciech Szczesny (Liverpool, Tottenham, Dortmund and Napoli had all played there up to that point). Everton didn’t just go there to play their own game, they went to specifically stifle the opposition in order to play their own game, i.e. having the better share of possession and pushing the opposition further back in order to dominate the game.
However we saw the comparison later in the season in the cup quarter final where they didn’t play with the same tactical intensity or intent to stifle Arsenal; they gave Arsenal more room and ended up giving Arsenal way too many chances and losing 4-1.
This shows the ability for Martinez to change his tactics. He went into the cup encounter with a “we’ll play our normal game and that should be enough to see us win” approach- the normal approach, but changed his usual way in the league encounter. However, does he do it often enough?
My answer is no. I’ve noticed this season in particular that whoever is playing left wing for Everton is asked to stay forward. This has led to many right backs enjoying a lot of space and joy down that side and a lot of chances have been created from that empty space. It is an irresponsible tactic in my opinion as it has more costs than benefits.
This tactic has been confirmed in Leon Osman’s book as something he specifically asks the players to do and deal with. He also doesn’t work on set-pieces at all, defensively or offensively. For quite a long time one of Everton’s weaknesses has been defending set-pieces, quite a number of goals have come from it and more often than not Everton lose the first header. Why on Earth wouldn’t you work on one of your main weaknesses in training when it is clearly harming you? This shows his lack of tactical flexibility as he isn’t acting on something he must be able to observe as a big weakness in this Everton team. Osman also says he shows little interest on working on defending in training in general, again Everton’s weakness this season and yet it isn’t being worked on at all. A severe lack of flexibility as he only wants to work on attacking and passing and ignore what is largely holding Everton back this season.
At Southampton in December we saw Martinez refuse to make any substitutions, despite having plenty of viable on options on the bench, when 2-0 and 3-0 down at St. Mary’s. He didn’t change the system, he didn’t change the approach and Everton subsequently barely created a chance and lost 3-0. He has shown changes to the formation on occasion, such as at Hull where the system was changed at half-time, but not with any effect.
Despite conceding way more chances from individual mistakes this season he hasn’t changed the approach from goal kicks and passing their way out of trouble at the back, which has often led to errors and opposition goals and chances. I’m not saying Everton should lump it forward all the time, I’m saying they should be encouraged to be more no nonsense when teams press them high in dangerous positions. This would also likely lead to teams not pressing them as much because they know they’ll just “get rid” when need be anyway.
I think overall, Martinez does sometimes try to change the approach but not enough. His tactical choices this season have been mainly poor and he hasn’t shown enough significant changes when things aren’t going well. And when he has shown slight changes, like a formation change at half-time, it hasn’t worked. Therefore he cannot be credited with being flexible or successful enough in his tactical approach.
