Just before Christmas last season, Everton’s head of medical services, Danny Donachie, gave an interview to a professional website where he addressed some of the key issues facing him as the senior physio at one of England’s leading football clubs. Six months into Roberto Martinez’s tenure as manager, Everton were riding high; the evening after Donachie’s interview was published, Martinez’s Everton would do what the team hadn’t managed in the previous 21 years and beat Manchester United at Old Trafford. It was hard to overstate the optimism, and the enthusiasm, which swept the stands at Goodison in response to the Catalan’s exposition of free-flowing football and apparent total lack of fear.

That December day, few Evertonians noticed Donachie’s interview, given as it was to a site which is part of the trade press and excited as they were about the looming fixture the next evening at Old Trafford. In the weeks which followed – as Goodison began to echo to chants of ‘Oviedo baby’ – it was still less likely that any match-going Blue would pay it much attention. But a year on, with Everton only having scored five league wins all season and slipping into a relegation battle on the back of four straight defeats – and with Donachie parting company with the club – it repays a look.

Donachie began by picking up on the issue of hamstring injuries, arguing that “many of the treatments we employ are no better than placebo under proper scrutiny. Anti-inflammatory medication for example is used widely in elite sport and yet there is more and more evidence arising that for soft tissue injuries they may actually retard rather than expedite healing.” One stat which went unheralded until recently was that in the 18 months of Martinez’s tenure, the Everton squad had been hit with 18 hamstring injuries – more than anyone else in the league – whereas previously Everton had a good record in this area. Donachie moved on, to address directly the challenges a physio can face dealing with a manager:

Competition and financial implications of success are irresistible in sport these days and the aspirations of the stakeholders involved in the care package of an athlete may not always appear to be aligned…It’s not inconceivable to find yourself in a position where the athlete and the coaching staff are desperate to play in the next game and you know it’s not in their best interest! This is when your communication skills come into play, by convincing the management it is the best thing for the player and hence the team and explain and cajole the player into preparing for the more sensible option.

So much, so unremarkable. Physios have to argue with managers – and players themselves – to stop players returning from injuries too soon. Big wow. But taken in context, Donachie’s remarks – and his sudden, unexplained departure from Everton – raise questions about the management of Everton’s first-team squad in the 2014-2015 season. It is perhaps merely a coincidence that James McCarthy, sidelined with a hamstring injury for weeks, was rushed back into the team in the middle of a bad run of form, and then had to limp out of the Newcastle match, proving to be unavailable for the next game against Hull. It’s perhaps a coincidence that news of Donachie’s resignation broke the day after that match. And then again, perhaps it isn’t.

Much has been made of Martinez’s status as a qualified physiotherapist, and there has been considerable speculation that Donachie’s departure is somehow related to a divergence of views on how to manage player injuries and rehabilitation, which crystallised around McCarthy. Donachie’s views on how to manage player rehab are unambiguous:

…the long term health and well-being of the athlete is paramount and this always has to be the case. All parties will be best served in the long run if this axiom is held true and any attempt to short cut this process will fail…

Donachie’s self-described “holistic” approach to player rehab and injury prevention was praised by former Everton captain David Weir, who claimed that Donachie’s approach helped prolong his career. Donachie was a highly thought of physio. And now, in the midst of a shocking run of form and in the wake of an injury crisis, with no official explanation he is gone.

Donachie isn’t the only member of the Everton backroom staff to have moved on to pastures new since the successes of Martinez’s first season, when Everton finished fifth and scored their record points total. Fitness and conditioning specialist Steve Tashjian left in the summer, following his colleague Dave Billows who had left on Martinez’s arrival at the club in 2013. Billows left to take over as head of fitness at Newcastle and Tashjian to take up the post of High Performance Director at MLS side Columbus Crew. Both boasted impressive CVs and were integral to the excellent fitness levels which characterised the latter phase of the Moyes era at Everton. Billows received high praise from cruiserweight fighter and Everton fanatic Tony Bellew, who claimed that he was “the best in the business”. Perhaps more tellingly, Bellew added that “a lot of the lads at Everton really miss him as well.” It’s fair to say that Billows’ philosophy on fitness for elite athletes differed from Martinez’s; according to the Newcastle Chronicle, one of Billows’ favourite sessions involved

wheel[ing] out ‘the stairs’. They sound like nothing much but the metal contraption – with a 30 degree ramp and twelve 24inch steps – was a way to increase acceleration and power. Players would sprint up the ramp half a dozen times and then hop down the stairs. The idea was to test muscles and joints at a key point during pre-season. It seemed to work.

Martinez instead preferred ball work, telling Everton fansite GrandOldTeam.com that he thought that

to get the footballer fit, means you need to work with the ball; if just thinking, you’re going to do a run, running action without the ball, is going to use different muscle than you do with the ball so for me it’s pointless to run and run and run or to do an exercise that is not linked to football.

Tashjian for his part was a data guru, Everton’s Head of Sports Science looking at all aspects of player performance from nutrition, through training to outcomes on the pitch.

These three men might have gone unlamented and unremembered by Evertonians who understandably tend to focus on the eleven on the pitch and the manager in the dugout, save for the the incredible decline in Everton’s performances this year which has begged any number of questions. Why have a team who only eight months ago destroyed Arsenal 3-0 in a display of blistering attacking football fallen apart so fast? Everton have gone from fearing no-one in 2013-2014 to only managing to beat Burnley, Aston Villa, QPR, West Ham and West Bromwich Albion in the league this time out. More than this, performances have been unconvincing; a decent first-half against QPR was followed by utter mediocrity (and accompanying boos) in the second. Everton were arguably lucky to beat West Ham, and only drew with Swansea at home due to a somewhat-miraculous decision by the referee not to award a penalty for Antolin Alcaraz’s diving save in the penalty area.

Everton have also been on the receiving end of bad refereeing decisions themselves, from referees as diverse as Andre Marriner and Lee Mason, and they might well bemoan their share of bad luck. But one question which has fuelled animated discussions on Everton forums – what has changed since last year – cannot simply be explained by luck or refereeing incompetence, however culpable both factors might be.

A unifying theme throughout the season has been a consistent lack of fitness in the first-team squad and a major injury crisis, including a rise in soft-tissue injuries, which has deprived the team of key players for extended periods. As Bellew noted, in Billows’ time at Everton “they got virtually no soft tissue injuries during that time, which are the issues that youget when players are over or under-worked.” The 18 hamstring injuries directly correlate with the time Billows has been absent from the club.

But the fitness problem is more comprehensive than simply injuries, and has dogged the team since pre-season, the first they had faced in years without Tashjian. In a shambles of a pre-season, Everton managed no victories against their opponents – which included teams such as SC Paderborn, Leicester City (who, perhaps ominously, beat them) and Tranmere Rovers – and Everton began the season with players unfit. Officially, Martinez claimed that players such as Kevin Mirallas and Romelu Lukaku needed extra time to recover from the World Cup. However, when Everton squandered leads in their first two games against Leicester and Arsenal as their players tired, it was significant that in the latter game Arsenal fielded a player (Per Mertesacker) who played the full 90 minutes having gone all the way to the World Cup Final. Belgium had gone home eight days earlier, after their quarter-final defeat.

It was a pattern which was to continue, exacerbated by the toll of injuries. The real turning point for Everton fans this season – the Hull home game, when Martinez’s side again squandered a lead to draw – illustrated the continuing fitness problems, by Martinez’s own admission. Everton barely pressed for a win, such was their exhaustion; Andy Hunter in the Guardian noted that “heavy legs in early December do not bode well” whilst Martinez claimed that “it is a difficult moment in the season to find energy” and the players “looked tired”. The Hull game saw the boos ring out at the final whistle, as Everton had found themselves pushed back by a side with no form whatsoever. It was also the eve of the first anniversary of the win at United, and Donachie’s interview in the trade press.

Put simply, if there’s one consistent change from last season to this for Martinez’s men, it’s this; they look knackered, often even as they start. “Lethargic” has been an over-used word in press reports on the Blues this season. Last season, Everton played attractive, expansive football but they did so with pace and purpose, driven forwards by the physical capacity of the players. The men who oversaw that capacity are now gone. Why Danny Donachie chose to go now, rather than Tashjian in the summer, we can’t know for certain. Everton started the season with the manager stating his objective as challenging for a Champions League spot; after four straight league defeats and having taken only four points from the last 24, the team are clearly not fit for that purpose.

Why these three men left the club, two of them in the last seven months, isn’t a matter of public record. But whilst Martinez’s Everton continue to suffer injury after injury and to limp from one lethargic performance to the next, it will surely remain a matter for speculation.