Russell Martin

[S-Clarke]

3 minutes ago, Chez said:

We rejected a £7m bid from Sheff United this summer, supposedly.

Wasn't that in the summer we last went down? I'm sure Sheff U were strongly interested, as then a PL side (he was stalling on a contract with us too).

Don't think we had any interest this summer.

[Chez]

1 minute ago, S-Clarke said:

Wasn't that in the summer we last went down? I'm sure Sheff U were strongly interested, as then a PL side (he was stalling on a contract with us too).

Don't think we had any interest this summer.

you are right, it was 2023. I guess that was a good decision. I suspect our valuation would have gone up a year later and his desire to leave would be non existent.

[Holmes_and_Watson]

1 hour ago, Farmer Saint said:

We scored 87 goals last season (5 less than Ipswich in top) with the largest number of created chances and second best XG, in a league we were expected to dominate. 

Stop talking rubbish - he'll probably do very well at Rangers.

Ouch. Mind you, it's not the first or thousandth time that would be true. 🙂

Behind my point, I was thinking of the dominance fans will expect. They aren't used to sides allowing their opponents to reset, rather than put them to the sword.

Rangers will have to break down sides who are looking to be compact, looking to catch Rangers out on set pieces and breaks.

We saw Martin's sides struggle to break some of those teams down in the Championship. We relied on simply having the better players. Rangers do too in their league.

They've just got rid of their manager with 17 wins, 5 draws and 5 losses. Miles ahead in second. But that gap in quality isn't enough for their fans. In large part because although 15 points ahead of third, they are 14 behind Celtic. And that's who they are really competing against.

That large number of goals scored will also be alongside the large number conceded that went with it. Like a mini-Spain, every Old Firm set back is a mini crisis. Martin will have to make sure that the draws we saw on what was a record unbeaten run for us, are nearly all wins there.

I hope he does well. Looking at the number of players we have that he 'd like, I'm also wondering if SR could just take over Rangers and transfer most of our squad there. Baz, Stephens, Will, Manning, Aribo...

Rubbish post 1001... done. 🙂

[Saint_clark]

Am I missing something? All this talk about him doing well at Rangers, wishing him luck there, how his style of play will get on. 

Hasn't Barry Ferguson just been appointed head coach there?

[Football Special]

6 hours ago, Saint_clark said:

Am I missing something? All this talk about him doing well at Rangers, wishing him luck there, how his style of play will get on. 

Hasn't Barry Ferguson just been appointed head coach there?

Yeah looks like they are going to wait until the summer , so we'll still be paying Martin for a whole longer 

[Holmes_and_Watson]

9 hours ago, Saint_clark said:

Am I missing something? All this talk about him doing well at Rangers, wishing him luck there, how his style of play will get on. 

Hasn't Barry Ferguson just been appointed head coach there?

I refuse to read this before finishing my daydream of Baz, Will, Manning, Jack, Joe and Ryan boarding a Glasgow bound coach. 🙂

[OldNick]

19 hours ago, Football Special said:

That would be a great job for him to be fair, and means we can stop paying him 

Did he play for Celtic? 

[East Kent Saint]

1 hour ago, OldNick said:

Did he play for Celtic? 

He was a player ?? Oh a defender so no wonder we had a solid defence , or have I got that wrong  ?

[Gloucester Saint]

2 hours ago, East Kent Saint said:

He was a player ?? Oh a defender so no wonder we had a solid defence , or have I got that wrong  ?

The ‘Norfolk Cafu’ no less. Although Rangers got the Lidl instant coffee version at the back end of his career on loan from Norwich. 

[Pamplemousse]

Sky just announced he's on Monday Night Football tomorrow night...

[CB Fry]

Five Live inexplicably used Nathan Jones as a Premier League summariser for while post sacking as well. 

 

[beatlesaint]

2 hours ago, Pamplemousse said:

Sky just announced he's on Monday Night Football tomorrow night...

Lots of talk about being brave, Jack Stephens being an amazing human being and how, given time it would have worked.

Will be interesting to see if Carragher licks his arse cos he was a major critic of the way we were playing etc

[Galway saint]

6 hours ago, Pamplemousse said:

Sky just announced he's on Monday Night Football tomorrow night...

I will be interested to see what he does with his hair for this ( full blow dried lego ?) and wouldn't rule out a black polo neck. 

 

[Miltonaggro]

6 hours ago, CB Fry said:

Five Live inexplicably used Nathan Jones as a Premier League summariser for while post sacking as well. 

 

To be honest, if we are strolling down the inexplicable boulevard, our board thought the cretin was premier league manager material. Beginning to think Dragan Solak is trapped in a Serbian version of Brewster’s Millions! 

[whelk]

Looks like he has put glitter in his beard

[Greenridge]

Is he joining the army? 

[dsrdorset]

What's he got on his feet?? Talks a good game....

[beatlesaint]

I had to laugh when interviewing Potter he said you have to adapt to the players you have. Slight nervous shuffling of the feet from RM !

[Badger]

21 minutes ago, Greenridge said:

Is he joining the army? 

Short back and sides ?

Didn't see it.

 

[Midfield_General]

I turned it on and he was standing in front of the video wall having a right pop at Spurs for making risky passes early in their game against Bournemouth and putting themselves under needless pressure at the back, which apparently you shouldn’t do because it immediately gives the opposition team and crowd a lift and they smell blood which makes it harder for you. 

Yeah, what sort of twat would coach a team to do that?

The absolute brass neck on him. 

[Harry_SFC]

49 minutes ago, dsrdorset said:

What's he got on his feet?? Talks a good game....

That's his problem. Talks a lot about his style of play but it has no substance in the premier league. The amount of people I'm seeing on X saying they'd take him back in a heartbeat 😵‍💫 

[SouSaint]

He's still pitching his vanity project then. 

[S-Clarke]

1 hour ago, Midfield_General said:

I turned it on and he was standing in front of the video wall having a right pop at Spurs for making risky passes early in their game against Bournemouth and putting themselves under needless pressure at the back, which apparently you shouldn’t do because it immediately gives the opposition team and crowd a lift and they smell blood which makes it harder for you. 

Yeah, what sort of twat would coach a team to do that?

The absolute brass neck on him. 

He doesn't see anything he does is wrong, but he's happy to have a pop at others for doing the same thing. This is Russell Martin though, so if he does it it's fine. He's totally full of himself and is totally blind to his own reality - it's quite scary really.

That little segment summed him all up.

[Fabrice29]

3 hours ago, S-Clarke said:

He doesn't see anything he does is wrong, but he's happy to have a pop at others for doing the same thing. This is Russell Martin though, so if he does it it's fine. He's totally full of himself and is totally blind to his own reality - it's quite scary really.

That little segment summed him all up.

Except for all the times he actively called out our players for doing those very things of course. 

[Thripp87]

Came across well to me. If we still had him we would be better off points wise and in a better place to come back up.

[RedArmy]

Just now, Thripp87 said:

Came across well to me. If we still had him we would be better off points wise and in a better place to come back up.

No we wouldn’t. But at least poor little Flynn would be happy. 

[Holmes_and_Watson]

 

https://www.skysports.com/football/video/36396/13325975/tottenham-hotspur-vs-bournemouth-jamie-carragher-and-russell-martin-break-down-how-cherries-press-caused-chaos-for-spurs

There's a massive gulf between what Russ sees as he breaks down the plays on his tactics board and the reality of a team all doing it on the pitch.

That's not to say the theory is wrong. Only how hard it is to implement. We're an abject lesson in that failing.

With his way being so single minded, there was no way back when even the basics didn't work.

Russ is the perfect person to analyse playing it out. He's had to go over the failings of it and players implementing it to the perfection needed every game of his career.

In this clip, Spurs try to implement their manager's idea. They don't all do it, and it falls flat on it's face. Russ worked and worked at getting the ideas in place, and either gave nothing or didn't have the players capable of dealing with it, when it didn't work.

In the clip, you can see how the auto passes Russ put in place allowed for the breaking of presses (not as good as Bournemouth's) in the Championship. He'd have Will be mobile in constantly looking to receive the ball from under pressure defenders. Putting themselves under needless pressure in the first place frustrated him. But that was them trying to do what they thought he was asking. Had our defender received the ball,  as the Spurs defender did, and just hoofed it, Russ would have had a moan.

[Graffito]

I too thought he came across well. I enjoyed hearing what he had to say. He talks a good game and knows how to communicate. He’d make a great pundit. I do wonder what might have been achieved with better players. On the other hand you could say that with any system. 

[Football Special]

4 hours ago, Graffito said:

I too thought he came across well. I enjoyed hearing what he had to say. He talks a good game and knows how to communicate. He’d make a great pundit. I do wonder what might have been achieved with better players. On the other hand you could say that with any system. 

He'd make a good salesman and is very convincing when explaining his ideas, I do laugh at Pep praising him so much still, that was the start of Man City's downfall , it will be very interesting to see where he ends up next and how he gets on. 

[Oisin]

7 hours ago, Fabrice29 said:

Except for all the times he actively called out our players for doing those very things of course. 

Don’t actually recall him doing that? I only remember him calling out the fans as being clueless for cheering when we cleared long against Liverpool and Villa.  Which demonstrated just how humble and classy he is.

Interesting piece, focussing on what spurs did wrong but never once showed the breadth of thinking to consider

a) what do you do as a manager when your players continually let you down because they’re not good enough? Persist, lose confidence, get worse, or adapt to protect and grind results?

b) what do you do for all the other facets of the game, of which there are many? Or are you so fixated on the starting of every phase at the back that you pick players solely on this and forget about the need to have anyone who can defend, save, tackle, create a chance, score a goal, defend a set piece, attack a set piece etc.

(I’m aware we scored plenty last season - I’m being somewhat facetious)

Russell sounded good last night from a certain angle but then his football in theory is wonderful. And when you have the better players it can work. But in the real world it’s flawed, and it’s high risk so liable to be badly exposed when you don’t have the best players. So you need to adapt. Which he doesn’t sound like he’s ever going to.

Good luck to whichever team next employs him, I’m just glad it’s over for us.

[Forester]

The interview, which was a good watch, only reinforced in my view the limitations he had managing us in the Premier League.  The complexity and detail with which he approaches things, with such an onus on passing patterns in and around our penalty area, is utterly dependent on having better technical players than opposition.  
 

So he needs to be managing a side which starts the season expecting to be in and around the upper echelons.  He isn’t going to get that chance any time soon in the Premier League, but may do in a less challenging environment overseas or alternatively a Leicester or someone next season in the championship.

[Pamplemousse]

What anyone managing needs to do when we get back to the Premier League (hopefully the season after next) is buy a whole new squad. This lot bar one or two can't cut it. 

[Fabrice29]

39 minutes ago, Oisin said:

Don’t actually recall him doing that? I only remember him calling out the fans as being clueless for cheering when we cleared long against Liverpool and Villa.  Which demonstrated just how humble and classy he is.

He definitely did against Newcastle at the start of the season. Praising McCarthy but questioning why it went back to him in the first place. He did it other times too. 

[Convict Colony]

Martin isnt a terrible manager, he just has champions league expectations for championship level players abilities.

[OldNick]

He didnt realse that you needed players with physicality lol 

He pointed at the home fans and said they were some of the problem by being nervous with us playing at the back

He said he shouldnt have adapted and changed players ffs when did he adapt?

Amazing how Carragher didnt criticise him and sucking up when all season hewas on his back.

The stats they put were all to make RM look good and were skewed

Only when showing his win percentage did him lack of quality, an appalling record apart from last season

 

[Midfield_General]

4 hours ago, Convict Colony said:

Martin isnt a terrible manager, he just has champions league expectations for championship level players abilities.

No - if you only have one idea, and a) you can’t see that it won’t work with the players you’ve got against the quality of opposition you’re playing, and b) you can’t or won’t change it, and you keep losing game after game after game because of it, that absolutely does make you a bad manager. 

Good managers don’t say ‘My plan would have worked if only I’d spotted the very obvious fatal flaws in it, and everything had been different.’ Good managers know that winning is all that matters, and adapt and find a way to win with what they’ve actually got. 

Look at the results Moyes has got at Everton in a matter of weeks with the same set of players that Dyche had. That’s a proper manager at work. 

Edited 4 hours ago by Midfield_General

[LeBizzier69]

5 minutes ago, Midfield_General said:

No - if you only have one idea, and a) you can’t see that it won’t work with the players you’ve got against the quality of opposition you’re playing, and b) you can’t or won’t change it, and you keep losing game after game after game because of it, that absolutely does make you a bad manager. 

Good managers don’t say ‘My plan would have worked if only I’d spotted the very obvious fatal flaws in it, and everything had been different.’ Good managers adapt and find a way to win with what they’ve actually got. 

Quite agree with this. Apparently these management traits make him a massive bellend to some people. Don’t get it.

[skintsaint]

24 minutes ago, OldNick said:

Amazing how Carragher didnt criticise him and sucking up when all season hewas on his back.

It is what I would expect of him to be honest.

[Badger]

2 hours ago, Convict Colony said:

Martin isnt a terrible manager, he just has champions league expectations for championship level players abilities.

Perhaps that makes him a terrible manager in itself.

[Appy]

Would still take him over what Juric has served up. 
 

Although it’s almost like a choice of getting punched in the face or kicked in the bollocks. 

[Lord Duckhunter]

1 hour ago, LeBizzier69 said:

Apparently these management traits make him a massive bellend to some people. Don’t get it.

I’ll clarify it for you then….He basically is a massive bellend. HTH 

[Midfield_General]

17 hours ago, Holmes_and_Watson said:

 

https://www.skysports.com/football/video/36396/13325975/tottenham-hotspur-vs-bournemouth-jamie-carragher-and-russell-martin-break-down-how-cherries-press-caused-chaos-for-spurs

There's a massive gulf between what Russ sees as he breaks down the plays on his tactics board and the reality of a team all doing it on the pitch.

That's not to say the theory is wrong. Only how hard it is to implement. We're an abject lesson in that failing.

With his way being so single minded, there was no way back when even the basics didn't work.

Russ is the perfect person to analyse playing it out. He's had to go over the failings of it and players implementing it to the perfection needed every game of his career.

In this clip, Spurs try to implement their manager's idea. They don't all do it, and it falls flat on it's face. Russ worked and worked at getting the ideas in place, and either gave nothing or didn't have the players capable of dealing with it, when it didn't work.

In the clip, you can see how the auto passes Russ put in place allowed for the breaking of presses (not as good as Bournemouth's) in the Championship. He'd have Will be mobile in constantly looking to receive the ball from under pressure defenders. Putting themselves under needless pressure in the first place frustrated him. But that was them trying to do what they thought he was asking. Had our defender received the ball,  as the Spurs defender did, and just hoofed it, Russ would have had a moan.

That clip is the exact bit I saw when I turned on MNF last night. It's absolutely hilarious, watching him standing there preaching his knowledge like he's some guru of the game, and not the person who has literally just been sacked for creating a mess so bad that the team he created, coached and managed has a strong chance of being the worst in the history of the Premier League. 

They should have brought up some other clips for him to share his sage wisdom on - for example I'd have loved to hear him talk through a video showing: 

• Each of the 36 goals we conceded in the 16 games we'd played when we sacked him - the second highest of any team in the league at that point
• Each of the 27 errors we made which led to shots for the opposition - the highest of any team in the league
• Each of the 11 errors we made which led to goals for the opposition - the highest of any team in the league

Obviously none of these could be down to him, so presumably he'd just blame the players... the ones he signed, picked and coached? 

 

Edited 53 minutes ago by Midfield_General

[Midfield_General]

13 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

I’ll clarify it for you then….He basically is a massive bellend. HTH 

I think he was referring to people's lack of appreciation for Moyes

[Wade Garrett]

Just read his comments from last night in the Echo.

Blimey, he brings delusion to a whole new level.  

Snake-oil salesman.

[SambaMaverick]

Cheek of the bloke, cares more about his ideology than results. Cares more about how his style comes across than results. Results are the bottom line - and he knows it deep down.

Why else would he rip up his playbook in the playoffs last season? The balance between risk and reward is completely off in his style.

The guy is a grifter and I feel sorry for whoever is taken in by him next. He wasn't a complete failure here but we were realistically a top-six side before a ball was kicked last season.

Having a break from here ATM but watching him last night boiled my piss.

[saintant]

It would have been far more interesting if they'd shown some clips of a collection of the ludicrous goals we gave away and let him analyse and explain what went wrong and why he did nothing to try to change things.

[ant]

8 hours ago, Football Special said:

He'd make a good salesman and is very convincing when explaining his ideas, I do laugh at Pep praising him so much still, that was the start of Man City's downfall , it will be very interesting to see where he ends up next and how he gets on. 

To my mind the reason Pep praised Russell is because Martin was/is a bit of a Guardiola acolyte.

Some of the main issues with that are:

1. Pep has City's squad at his disposal (which in itself became too reliant on Rodri);
2. The philosophy was never particularly well-suited to us as a club;
3. Being closely tied to a philosophy is inherently fallible, as what wins out is cyclical.

Just as tika taka was stifled by the gegenpress, possession-at-all-costs football is struggling against raw physicality & quick turnovers of play. Successful managers fall from grace when they're incapable of out-maneuvering the new guard; when City couldn't buy a win, even Pep had to admit their football needed to evolve

Martin talks like an innovator whilst advocating tactics that have been and gone.

[Sarnia Cherie]

1 hour ago, SambaMaverick said:

Cheek of the bloke, cares more about his ideology than results. Cares more about how his style comes across than results. Results are the bottom line - and he knows it deep down.

Why else would he rip up his playbook in the playoffs last season? The balance between risk and reward is completely off in his style.

The guy is a grifter and I feel sorry for whoever is taken in by him next. He wasn't a complete failure here but we were realistically a top-six side before a ball was kicked last season.

Having a break from here ATM but watching him last night boiled my piss.

As much as I enjoy watching football and would have watched the West Ham v Newcastle game last night, knowing he was giving his 'expert' opinion spoiled it for me, so I didn't watch it. I hope he doesn't become a regular. I would prefer Clinton Morrison to him and that's saying something.

[Whitey Grandad]

8 minutes ago, Sarnia Cherie said:

As much as I enjoy watching football and would have watched the West Ham v Newcastle game last night, knowing he was giving his 'expert' opinion spoiled it for me, so I didn't watch it. I hope he doesn't become a regular. I would prefer Clinton Morrison to him and that's saying something.

Good job you missed it. It was awful. Even on fast forward.

[tdmickey3]

1 hour ago, Wade Garrett said:

Just read his comments from last night in the Echo.

Blimey, he brings delusion to a whole new level.  

Snake-oil salesman.

 

He said: "I think the biggest surprise for me was just the athleticism and the power. The individual quality and the ruthlessness of the Premier League now.

 

This particular part sums up his arrogance and stupidity, did he not actually bother to watch any Premier League football? 

Anyone with an ounce of football knowledge would have known this...