Why I don’t want Martinez sacked, yet.

Of all the statistics that gave been brought up over the last few months, I don’t think any are worse than the fact that this will be Everton’s worst record at home, ever. There have been seasons when we’ve been relegated and seasons when we were very close to being relegated but in all of those we’ve managed to get more points per game than this season. All of this and we still have two games to go at home. Two games that will be very uncomfortable for Martinez should we lose in the semi-final.

This one was uncomfortable enough for the Spaniard with banners, signs and a fan running on the pitch to protest against him. There were boos and apathy from the crowd, an almost resignation that the game wasn’t going to be a pleasant one. All of this comes with an FA Cup semi-final just a week away. There have been plenty of fans saying that everyone should get behind the team whilst we still have a competition to play for, so if Martinez thinks this is bad, Bournemouth at home will be hell if we haven’t got a ticket booked for the final.

Saturday was further evidence of how maddening it is to support a team managed by him. In January we signed a striker in Oumar Niasse for £13.5m and he has hardly played. At the time it was said that he wasn’t fit, that was January… it’s now April. Instead Martinez elected to play his favourite in Arouna Kone who has a woeful goalscoring record, even with a hat-trick against Sunderland. He also played Gibson and Osman who are most likely going to leave in the summer so it was useless to see them play. Some may argue that he wanted to give himself the best opportunity to win the game, which would be a fair point, but dissolves when he decided to replace Gibson with 17 year old Tom Davies with 10 minutes to go when he could have brought on Lukaku or Niasse. I was happy to see the precocious talent of Tom Davies in action but it should have been from the start. The performances of Davies and 18 year old Callum Connolly were the two brightest spots on a beautiful Goodison Day.

That all being said, I am not Martinez out, not yet. The question that automatically gets followed up with a ‘Martinez out’ comment is someone asking who you would get to replace him. I am not one for anyone in the club at the moment for taking over. None have 1st team managerial experience and I don’t buy into the notion that Duncan Ferguson would magically motivate the players to great performances, see Alan Shearer at Newcastle. So any manger I do fancy won’t have time to come in and change anything between now and next Saturday. One thing that Martinez has shown in his management career to this date is that he is a good cup manager. He won it obviously with Wigan and has done reasonably well with us. The game vs Chelsea showed how one off the cup is, it’s treated differently. You often hear players talk about how it’s a good distraction and I don’t think our league problems will affect us in a one off game. When the players step out to warm-up at Wembley they will see over 30,000 of us Evertonians singing loud and proud, giving the team it’s full support. No booing, no apathy, no negative banners, no planes.

This is our 21st year without a trophy and I feel that getting rid of Martinez right now would have a detrimental impact on our chance of ending that. So I make this statement: I want Martinez as our manager until we’re out of the FA Cup. I will also make this statement: If Everton win the FA Cup, I still want Martinez to be sacked. He has shown he is completely inept in league campaigns and for that reason I hope we have a change of manger come the summer, you can’t continue having bad league seasons with the hope of a good cup run. I understand the desperation that fans have with wanting him go, people are worried that it wont happen, so want it to happen as soon as possible. If Martinez is sacked before the FA Cup however, I wouldn’t be losing any sleep.