A huge question mark has appeared over at Everton as the name Roberto Martinez has apparently emerged as the frontrunner for the Everton job after Rafa Benitez’s sacking.
It does make one wonder if this is being made up as with the current Everton, this could actually happen. Otherwise how else would one explain how Rafa Benitez became the club’s manager in the first place? Or that how Benitez was even apparently allowed to sanction the departure of key personnel, both on and off the field, just days and months before he was sacked?
Benitez himself should not have any reservations about being the fifth manager to be fired by Farhad Moshiri in the space of six choleric years just as the first manager under Everton’s majority shareholder to go ought not to have any complaints either as it would have been extremely difficult to have found an Evertonian back in May 2016 who wouldn’t have agreed with Moshiri’s decision to sack Martinez then.
Although admittedly given how well his reign had started, it was sad how it finally ended as Martinez had done well to build on the foundations laid by David Moyes in his first season in charge as he led the Blues to fifth place and the club’s highest-ever points total in the Premier League.
His second season, although admittedly underwhelming, wasn’t without any redemptive highlights, with the run to the last-16 of the Europa League being probably the most notable one. Unfortunately Everton exited the competition with a farcical 5-2 second-leg defeat at Dynamo Kyiv, which served as a precursor of what was to come in his upcoming final season in charge.
He led the Blues to two domestic cup semi-finals and surely anyone who witnessed the humiliations at Anfield, the King Power Stadium and the Stadium of Light would have no doubts at all that Martinez’s head had to roll.
Just like Benitez’s had to.
Applause has to be given to Martinez for having creditably rebuilt his career with the Belgium national team, having successfully harnessed the skills of an incredibly-talented generation of players and turned them into the best FIFA-ranked international team in the world.
Despite having been denied of silverware at Everton, he has nonetheless restored, while enhancing, his reputation during his time in charge of Manchester United.
The dominant question looming now is that he has been out of club football for six years now and, not unlike Benitez, there is a lot of uncertainty over whether he is the right manager for Everton at the second time of asking.
More pertinently, when it comes to weighing up who he wants to appoint as his sixth full-time manager since taking over the club, owner Farhad Moshiri must have the feelings of the fanbase forefront in his mind.
In the case of Benitez, it had seemed that he would always come under fire if results went badly and they have indeed gone totally at a tangent to expectations, and that, much more than his Liverpool FC connections, is the reason why he is no longer in the job.
Now it looks as if Moshiri would be running the risk of having the same scenario play out again by reappointing Martinez as the ending weeks of the latter’s reign were hazardous and even toxic, like Benitez’s were, with similar protests in the stands.
So, would Moshiri and the board really go back to the man they deemed not good enough six years ago?
But, it seems as though they may as it is well nigh impossible to expect sensible decisions to be made these days.