Martinez rejects Alcaraz criticsm
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20/03/2015
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The team’s defensive performance was poor
Roberto Martinez insists making Antolin Alcaraz a scapegoat for Everton’s Europa League exit is unfair, offering a passionate defence of his under-fire centre-half following Thursday night’s 5-2 thrashing at the hands of Dynamo Kyiv.
Martinez insists the whole team were to blame for their poor defensive show at the Olympic Stadium, and says 32-year-old Alcaraz was left exposed too often.
The Everton manager kept faith with the Paraguayan alongside captain Phil Jagielka after the pair had played in the first leg win over Kyiv, and then helped the Blues to a clean sheet against Newcastle last weekend.
Evertonians were angered that John Stones was not recalled to the starting line-up after recovering from a virus but Martinez says it would have been a risk to throw him back in at the deep end.
Antolin has the experience of playing in Europe before and John is a young man and sometimes we need to give him the right game to compete for his place, Martinez said.
We are now looking back at the game and it is very easy to say this should have been done’ but you need to allow football to make the decisions.
Antolin and Phil had created a very strong partnership in the previous two games and after keeping a clean sheet against Newcastle there is no need to dislodge that.
Second, since he had the virus John has not played any football so it would be a major, major risk to throw him into a game of that intensity with the last experience he had away from home in Europe when he got sent off.
It was important to have continuity in the back four that kept a clean sheet on Sunday and that is the reason. Martinez added: Antolin had to deal with too many actions that we, as a team, didn’t stop well enough on Thursday night.
I don’t think defensively he had a poor game, I think as a team we put our defence and keeper under immense pressure because our defensive performance as a team wasn’t up to standard.
Quotes sourced from
Liverpool Echo
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Roberto Martinez speaking about Alcaraz’s performance in Kyiv:
“I don’t think defensively he had a poor game, I think as a team we put our defence and keeper under immense pressure because our defensive performance as a team wasn’t up to standard.”
If he thought that wasn’t a poor game by his centre-back then I am amazed. It’s one thing to not criticise individual players; it’s another to not recognise that somebody’s game wasn’t up to the required standard.
Alcatraz must be dropped for tomorrow. Stones and Garbutt should both come into the side.
Anyone know if Garbutt has signed that contract yet?
I’m not sure what to think of Martinez post euro. We are stuck with him aren’t we? Should have gone after our woeful Christmas fixtures and several times since.
Alcaraz had a nightmare of a game and should have been subbed before 30mins, as Reidy said, “You’re sitting with me son”, pity we didn’t have a tall, CB in our team who can head a ball when they are pumped in from distance, apart from the two we do have in Stones and Distin,
I think he’s right to try and take some flak off Alcaraz but in doing so he shouldn’t deny the obvious: of course the man had a poor game. I don’t think too many of us would have quibbled at his selection after Newcastle though, and the manager is correct to say that this was a collective failure.
Joe the results aren’t bad are they? WBA have lost, Leicester are dead, Burnley are going to lose. Palace winning is the only one we would want to be different. If Sunderland lose tonight and we get 3 points tomorrow then I will consider us finally safe barring a total disaster.
So if John Stones was a “major, major risk” why was he even on the bench when Distin did not even travel?!
When will someone call this idiot’s bluff and turn his nonsense back on him?
“Antolin and Phil had created a very strong partnership in the previous two games and after keeping a clean sheet against Newcastle there is no need to dislodge that.”
Funny that logic didn’t apply to the goal keeping position after 3 clean sheets….
“Antolin and Phil had created a very strong partnership in the previous two games and after keeping a clean sheet against Newcastle there is no need to dislodge that.”
So why did RM return Howard in goal after three clean sheets by Robles?
RM by his talk seems to contradict himself so no wonder so many think he is out of his depth.
Tony results seem to have changed in our favour now (wipes sweat of forehead). I don’t see the comments from RM about Alcaraz as deflecting from Alcaraz but almost as saying “Thank the lord he is taking the blame but I’d better say something about it.”
It’s all up to anyone’s interpretation but that’s how I see his comment. Basically he sees it as someone else has taken a bullet meant for him.
Message for Roberto: learn to shit the fuck up because it insults the intelligence of supporters some of that have been watching football for 60 years.
Alcaraz had a mare so don’t say anything or something along the lines of ” the lad will be disappointed by his performance”
Yes there was no pressure on the ball that allowed Kyiv to ping balls in the box at will, but FFS the balls were bread and butter for any CB let alone a ‘top class experienced international’ and it would’ve been disappointing if the CB from your mates Sunday league team had ‘dealt’ with crosses like that.
BTW, I thought the Barca way was when you lose the ball you swarm al over the opposition to get it back again.
Sounds a bit like the bit in the Godfather where Michael denounces Satin whilst is henchmen are getting ready to take out all his enemies.
You can’t expect him to slaughter Alcaraz in the media and I doubt he’s even capable of doing it behind closed doors.
We should be checking the results for Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and dare I say it the RS of a weekend NOT Leicester, Palace, WBA and Burnley. That’s how far backwards we’ve gone………..not quite the Champions League as BK was apparently promised. (Did anyone actually believe that other than BK and Rocky?)
If we lose to QPR then that has got to be it for RM, surely?
Oh no! Please just say nothing at all. Abject performance by Alcaraz , we know it , he knows it and surely RM knows it !
Looking forward to the season ending and having a break from this farce of a season.
Well, I can agree with Martinez about the back four…up to a point. Alcaraz played well enough last Sunday to earn a contender for man of the match. The team kept a clean sheet on Sunday (some scary moments early on though. I thought we played well on Sunday after about the first 20-25 minutes.
On Sunday though, we had more cohesive set up and a midfield who were quick to move the ball out and two forwards who were getting in the face of the Newcastle defenders.
So I can see what Martinez says about our defence being worth the start on Wednesday. English International Centre Half and left full back, Irish International right full back and and Alcaraz who had palyed quite well on Sunday.
It soon became apparent though that, a our midfield was being overran and Barry in particular was slower to the ball than the oppositon and once they were past him that was that. It also became apparent early on that Alacaraz was having a very iffy start.
I felt he should have been taken off before half time and replaced with John Stones. I also think Barry should have been on the bench and Gibson start the match.
We looked frail down our left and crosses were going in with depressing regularity.
To me though, I wouldn’t be singling out Alcaraz as though our defeat was solely due to him. I don’t think that’s true. Our goalkeeper was beaten twice with shots from outside the area. I thought his positioning for them was really poor. A couple of weeks ago, I think it was Young Boys who went ahead with a very similar goal and the press was calling it a “wonder goal”. Well I don’t think it was and two of the goals the other night were the same. At the time they were scored our goalie appeared to be well outside our 6 yard box. I think even I could put the ball in an empty net…if I could kick it that far! I think that Robles deserved his chance and I think Howard needs dropping and shouldn’t have come right back in.
I also looked on in amazement as our captain headed a ball right in to our own danger area which led directly to another goal for Kyiv. That was poor as well. So that was 3 goals at least, that I think were down mostly to our own doing.
Lukaku and Atsu, I thought kept some pressure on the opposition but were getting little support from the midfield.
So I agree that Alcaraz was not alone in having a poor game,,, but he should have been hauled off and that’s where I disagree with Martinez.
Frustrating, depressing and Martinez got it wrong in my view, when we could have and should have, given Kyiv a much sterner test.
“It was important to have continuity in the back four that kept a clean sheet on Sunday and that is the reason.”
Didn’t stop him dropping Robles after 3 clean sheets FFS
Having studied the latest utterances from our deluded blabber mouth of a manager, I have now decided to make my life a Martinez free zone.
I routinely hit the off button when I see him on TV, same with the radio, and I no longer read the Echo sports pages.
The saddest thing about this is that my Martinez dartboard has to go too, and this has given me hours of pleasure recently.
I will donate this to his next club, which, a good source tells me, will be Prescot ‘evo-stik’Cables. As a special favour, they are going to reward my donation with a quantity of their sponsor’s product.
I am sure this will come in very useful for us before he departs for Hope Street at the end of this season.
Oh my God, I have just become as deluded as our great leader!
Let’s face it – Bobby wouldn’t recognize a good defender or a good defensive game if it came up and kicked him in the gonads.
Really, him offering an opinion about any defensive topic is not worth reporting
Let’s be honest, the title should be Martinez rejects criticism of anybody or anything, no matter how shite we are, how shite we play, how low our league position is, how many cups we get knocked out of, no one is ever to blame including of course himself. He lives in fucking footballing lala land where everything is phenomenal, lose tomorrow and he is surely out, please someone Phil, Col, anybody tell me that will be the case!
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