Remember them sinister pencil drawings by sixth formers that used to adorn the walls of the art department at school?
There was always one of an iron or a kettle, and the distorted impression of the room it stood in reflected in the metal – the artist himself elongated like the figure in The Scream. Drawings of iconic figures and album covers always featured heavily – it’s probably all Tupac Shakur and H from Steps nowadays – but back in the 80s prog was still a thing, and so you would always get pictures of the Pink Floyd ‘two flowers shagging’ and, of course, scenes depicting Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.
One image in particular always stood out from the HG Wells space opera, and that’s the one with the ragged figure of a priest being vaporised as he holds up a tiny crucifix in pathetic defiance of one of the hulking alien automatons laying waste to London.
Well, dear reader, you can see where this is going right now, can’t you? That’s right, the murderous space tripod represents Roberto Martinez and what he’s going to do to Everton if something doesn’t change soon.
It wasn’t really, he was the priest, but we’ve discussed his obsessive faith in one style of play that often now that even the laptop has started underlining in red words like ‘possession’ and suggests as an alternative ‘fuck off writing this shite you bore and go outside and meet girls’.
Anyway, going down meekly at Stoke and then talking about the Europa League causing tiredness has got to start the alarm bells ringing for everyone now. Everyone.
Can we go down?
Fucking right we can.
Look at our league form. Then look at our results against Leicester City, one of the sides so bad they will be our saviours. Then look at how many games are left.
It would surely be the most Everton thing ever too, if on the brink of the most lucrative TV deal of all time the Toffees decided that they were going to dip out of the top division and pass up on it.
And how we laughed.
Does the trigger get pulled on Martinez now then? Aaah, but remember him in that Bring Me Sunshine video?
Chances are he will be given more time, but not much. The home leg against Kiev and then Newcastle at Goodison. Fail to beat the Geordies and even the endlessly loyal Bill Kenwright will concede that it’s time to take the Spaniard out behind the woodshed.
We’ve always tried as much as possible to not compare Martinez with his predecessor, out of respect to both really. When we were flying last season it seemed churlish to pour scorn on David Moyes’s previous decade of hard work. Likewise, it’s somewhat disingenuous to now ‘yearn’ for the solidity and safety the Scot brought when everyone moaned about his conservatism for so long.
That said, you do feel as if Moyes would have almost cherished the situation we are in now, which probably indicates some of his limitations as a manager. Backs against the wall with some winnable home games to come, whereas you feel Martinez is lying in a darkened room with a cool flannel on his brow, murmuring feverishly about Wembley and the Nou Camp, old ginger spuds would just fucking love it. He’d have his trackies tucked into his shit trainees and be out there, throwing Tim Cahill or Marouane Fellaini up front and trying to blast upcoming sides like Newcastle, Burnley or Southampton out of the park through sheer force of will.
And the crowd would get behind that.
The worry, and we will know after the game on the 15th, is that Martinez’s very DNA makes it almost impossible for him to tap into those reserves of raw, indignant spite that are so integral to the whole ‘Everton experience’, because right now Goodison is more of a petting zoo than a bear pit.
Who knows, perhaps Martinez, with his undoubted intelligence and style, is indeed a manager ahead of his time. But Everton desperately need one for the here and now.
Ooh, serious face.
This is not football 
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