Derided by fans and often treated
by managers as an irritating sideshow, next week’s Europa League clash with
Dynamo Kiev will provide Everton manager Roberto Martinez with much needed
shelter from the Premier League storm that is brewing around Goodison Park.
The Toffees will play host to the
Ukrainians next Thursday after last week’s emphatic swatting aside of Young
Boys of Berne 7-2 on aggregate in the round-of-32.
However, it is Everton’s wretched
domestic form that is threatening to define Martinez’s second season on the
blue-half of Merseyside.
Wednesday’s 2-0 defeat at a
resurgent Stoke was the seventh in their last 12 top-flight matches, a run that
includes only one win and none in their last five outings.
That form has left Everton
sitting in 14th place just six points above the relegation zone,
with 28 points from 28 games - the club’s lowest points return ever at this
stage of a Premier League season.
Martinez said he understood the
fans frustration following the defeat to Mark Hughes’ side but called on the
fans to pull together and support the club and his players, adding: "We
have got 30 points to fight for and we are going to give our lives to get as
many as we can.
“With our support and everyone at
the club, this is the moment to get together."
The Spaniard complained that his
side were “missing energy” due to the demands of playing five games in two
weeks and it showed at The Britannia.
With six of their final 10 games
at home, the uber-positive Martinez insists that he and his players are “not
looking down” despite winning only three games at Goodison Park this campaign.
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| Roberto Martinez is overseeing a wretched Premier League campaign with Everton |
Blues fans of a certain vintage
will have vivid memories of a last-gasp final day comeback against Wimbledon in
1994 that preserved Everton’s status as never having being relegated from the
top-flight.
Mike Walker’s side looked doomed
after conceding two goals in the opening 20 minutes against the Londoners while
relegation rivals Ipswich Town were clinging on against Blackburn Rovers for
the solitary point needed to avoid the drop.
However, a Graham Stuart penalty
and a Barry Horne screamer levelled the match before Stuart etched his name
into Everton folklore with a scrappy winner that ensured salvation.
A year on from dicing with the
drop, Paul Rideout headed the winner in the 1995 FA Cup final win over
Manchester United to bring European football back to Goodison Park for the
first time since the ban on English clubs was lifted following the Heysel
Stadium disaster in 1985.
Dutch giants Feyenoord ended Joe
Royle’s side’s interest in the now defunct Cup Winners Cup at the second round
stage and it would be 10 more years before Everton competed in European
football again, this time under the guidance of David Moyes.
The Scot had led Everton to the
dizzy heights of fourth place in the Premier League in 2005 - his third full
season in charge - after taking over a struggling side from compatriot Walter
Smith in March 2002.
The Toffees’ European adventure
under Moyes was over before it even started though with defeats to Villarreal
in the Champions League qualifying round and a first round exit to Dinamo
Bucharest in the UEFA Cup.
Despite this continental
disappointment, Moyes’ standing with the Goodison faithful remained relatively
strong - something which cannot be said of the current manager, who trudged
passed the away end of the Britannia Stadium on Wednesday night to a chorus of
boos.
Martinez may well feel he has
earned some leeway with the fans by delivering post-Christmas European football
to Goodison Park for only the third time in three decades.
However, a dreadful run in the
Premier League has seen Everton pick up just seven points from a possible 36
while in the same period cross-city rivals Liverpool have amassed 30 points to
sit nine places and 23 points clear of The Blues.
League Two’s Bradford City have
beaten more Premier League teams than Everton in 2015.
This horrendous league form has led to increasing fears of a repeat of the 2012-13 season which saw Martinez guide Wigan Athletic to a first ever FA Cup triumph but relegation to The Championship.
Two weeks after that famous
Latics win at Wembley, Everton chairman Bill Kenwright anointed the 41-year-old
Catalan as the man to replace Moyes, who headed off to Old Trafford for an
ill-fated spell in charge of Manchester United.
While Moyes floundered in the
giant shadow cast by Sir Alex Ferguson, his replacement on Merseyside could do
no wrong as a rebranded Everton suddenly became everyone’s favourite ‘other
team’, playing an attractive brand of football which secured fifth place last
term.
Romelu Lukaku looked like a £28million
pound striker while the acquisition of Gareth Barry on loan from Manchester
City was hailed as a masterstroke by Martinez whose quick-passing attacking
style got the best out of flying fullbacks Leighton Baines and Seamus Coleman
while Steven Naismith and Ross Barkley sparkled as central attackers.
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| Ross Barkley has failed to build on a promising season last year for The Toffees |
However, a year on, and it
appears - at least on the domestic front - that teams have gotten wise to the
Martinez philosophy and so far the Spaniard has failed to come up with an
effective antidote.
Rewind just over a decade and the
same plaudits were being bestowed on Moyes whose first season in the hotseat
saw Everton finish seventh in 2003 and narrowly miss out on European football.
Moyes began the following
campaign as the Manager of the Year but ended it fourth-from-bottom overseeing
Everton’s worst ever finish in the Premier League era on 39 points.
The Toffees beat the drop by six
points in 2004 - the same margin they currently sit outside the bottom three
by.
Over the coming weeks Everton
face four of the sides below them in the run-in and by the time Tottenham
Hotspur visit on the final day of this season in May, Martinez, along with
35,000 Toffees, will be hoping for a less stressful afternoon than that famous
day in May 1994.
