“Pep Guardiola is one of the best managers in world football, I don’t think we are discovering anything by saying that. It’s going to be fantastic for the league. He’s going to bring a very successful football philosophy. Without a doubt it will affect a lot of young coaches and managers in the country and bring a completely different tactical approach in the British game. He’s Catalan, so of course I should know exactly what he is as a person, as a winner. He’s got an attention to detail very, very difficult to find in another manager.”

Roberto Martínez was practically glowing. Sat in Everton’s state-of-the-art Finch Farm training base, he spoke about his managerial idol after the news broke about Guardiola’s impending move to Manchester City. Martínez exudes positivity to such an extent that he’s often criticised for a general lack of realism, but this was different; there was an unmistakable glint in his eye as he praised the credentials of his fellow Catalan.

The whole press conference felt like an apprentice serving up semi-automatic platitudes about his master, with Martínez’s footballing philosophy coming from the very same place – both geographically and ideologically – as Guardiola’s meticulous brand of possession-based football. The two are bound by an intrinsic link – a desire to turn their teams into relentless passing machines that stifle opposition teams to death – and they share many of the same beliefs when it comes to how the game should be played. They are two peas in a pod, even if the end results are often markedly different.

When it comes down to it, most managers can be divided into two broad categories: pragmatists and idealists. Pragmatism adapts to meet the needs of the team. Rather than pursuing any long-term holistic vision, the raison d’etre is to win football matches in the short-term and everything else, such as style of play and how pleasing it is on the eye, is secondary.

Pragmatism is alive and well in the Premier League. Managers such as Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce immediately spring to mind and, although the football played by their sides is not always pretty, the two managers largely achieve what they set out to do: take struggling Premier League sides of inferior quality and make them harder to beat.

Pulis and Allardyce, for all their virtues, are almost diametrically opposed to the likes of Guardiola and Martínez: men who strive for total perfection as they attempt to turn football into something approaching a form of art. The Catalan duo are pursuing idealism: a steadfast “belief in or pursuance of ideals, the tendency to represent things in their ideal forms, rather than as they are.” Their aesthetic principles are of supreme importance, and are practically non-negotiable. Furthermore, there’s a pervading sense from Guardiola and Martínez that, at its best, with top quality players who are all well versed in their duties, this possession-centric brand of football is approaching unbeatable.

This may well be the case – think Guardiola’s Barça team from 2008 until 2012 – but, as Martínez and other members of the unofficial Guardiola fanclub can testify, problems come when the system is not correctly implemented or players are not good enough to adhere to the gameplan.

Pep Guardiola celebrates with his players during Bayern Munich’s match against Juventus in the Champions League. Photograph: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images

Monomania is defined as an excessive preoccupation with one thing or idea. The concept will be familiar to anyone who has read Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick. The cautionary tale focuses on one man’s fastidious pursuit of the eponymous whale. One of the central themes in the novel is the reckless nature of Captain Ahab’s quest to enact revenge on the whale, which not only fails but also puts others in grave peril. Throughout Melville’s narrative, Ahab’s insanity is frequently referred to as a form of monomania: an unshakable obsession with one goal. The phrase is derived from the ancient Greek word “monos”, meaning “single” or “alone”, and perfectly encapsulates how one person’s quest can alienate others and appear to border on insanity.

There is a growing feeling of unrest among a section of Everton fans, who think the monomaniacal Martínez should learn from Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” His detractors say Martínez has not successfully implemented his Plan A in the Premier League and is not adaptable or pragmatic enough to change that system when things don’t go to plan. If Ahab’s monomania in Moby Dick centres on the pursuit of a whale, then the Everton manager’s weakness is his seemingly endless attempt at replicating Guardiola’s Barcelona model.

“Barcelona is probably the closest football club to my hometown [of Balaguer in Catalonia]. I always follow that club,” said Martínez in 2009. “I’ve met Pep a couple of times, he’s a very impressive man, he knows exactly what he wants and he’s worked extremely hard for it. He’s a great example not only for me but also for many chairmen to take the harder decisions.”

Martínez pursues passing football obstinately and sees it as his duty to hone the technical side of players’ games. His style of play gave Swansea and Wigan a crucial edge in their promotion battles and helped the latter win the FA Cup in 2013, but Martínez’s success in leading unfancied Wigan to a trophy was tempered by relegation in the very same season.

A look at Martínez’s results in the Premier League at Wigan and Everton against those achieved by Pulis with Stoke City, Crystal Palace and West Brom show their records are almost identical. Martinez has 80 wins, 74 draws and 102 defeats from his 256 matches, while Pulis has racked up 84 wins, 74 draws and 102 defeats in his 263 matches. In fact, Pulis has won a higher percentage of his matches (31.9%) than Martínez (31.2%).

Scarves on sale outside Goodison Park in 2015. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

Martínez joined Everton in 2013 following David Moyes’ move to Manchester United. Hopes were high that he would offer an improvement on the solid, if unspectacular, football served up in the Moyes era, while at the same time maintaining or even bettering the Scot’s results. His first season at Goodison Park was productive as the Toffees finished in fifth position. Fans, for the most part, were happy with the progress being made yet occasionally grumbled about the lack of intensity and forward passes evident in some of Everton’s play.

After narrowly missing out on Champions League qualification in his first campaign, Martínez has failed to adequately address the flaws that have plagued his side over the past two seasons. When asked why Everton are under-performing, club legend Neville Southall blamed lack of defensive solidity. “Our problem is balancing attacking prowess with defending,” said Southall. “I’ve got no problem with our attacking play, it’s old-school in that it’s outscoring your opponent rather than keeping it tight. But to be honest, they’ve got international players in goal and across the backline. They’ve got a good back four and if you can’t defend with five internationals, you shouldn’t be playing in the Premier League.”

This side containing a raft of top players currently lies in 12th, just below Tony Pulis’s West Brom. Worryingly, a defence containing England internationals Phil Jagielka, John Stones and Leighton Baines, as well as highly rated Republic of Ireland right-back Seamus Coleman regularly leaks goals, conceding the most in the league on their own turf. Individual errors have been common – particularly when building from the back against teams that press high – while defending crosses and set pieces as a unit remains a significant flaw.

Fans are fed up with the manager coming out and praising the players and the performance when we lose Neville Southall

A clue to understanding what appears to be unexplainable lies in Martínez’s own attitude to defensive planning. Last February the Everton boss gave a telling insight into his methodology on the training ground. “I believe the game should be played in a specific manner,” he said. “Taking risks, getting on the ball and relying on the talent of the players to score goals rather than systems and dead-ball situations, keeping clean sheets and not taking risks. Unfortunately you get too many managers achieving success with another type of football. You can analyse teams over history and there are parasite teams. There are certain styles that guarantee you 40 points, that’s success. Unfortunately you have other young managers trying to play the right way and they get relegated. Football is not right in those moments.”

Quite simply, Martínez refuses to compromise when it comes to style and his contempt for those that eschew technical play is palpable. Martínez wishes to outscore the opposition and hopes to do so by “out-footballing” them. He will rarely focus on corners or set pieces in training, believing those elements to be unworthy of his brand of technical, passing football. For him, playing to percentages is tantamount to a lack of control on the trajectory of the match itself.

Unfortunately for Everton – and Wigan before them – Martínez’s teams leak an alarming number of goals from these sorts of situations as a result. In the 2012-13 season, Wigan were relegated after shipping a league-high 73 goals in 38 games and, for all of the current Everton side’s attacking flair, they are still vulnerable defensively.

Another thing that is common to Martínez and other Guardiola disciples is the endlessly positive rhetoric. Whether it’s describing Gareth Barry as “one of the best English players ever,” as he did recently, or in praising his players after an avoidable defeat or draw, these managers tend to fall into the trap of frequent hyperbole. Southall thinks this rhetoric is not endearing the manager to the club’s fanbase: “One thing I’ve noticed among the fans is that they are fed up with the manager coming out and praising the players and the performance when we lose 3-1. It gets a bit wearing. I wouldn’t get rid of him as I think he’s a fantastic manager but in the summer he needs to sit down and see if he can find someone to work on the defensive side of the game.”

As Southall suggests, all is not lost for the Catalan. In mitigation, his philosophy in based on long-term gains, with the emphasis on bottom-up regeneration of the club over short-term spikes and gains. And, in Romelu Lukaku, Ross Barkley, John Stones and Gerard Deulofeu, Everton have some of the best young talent in the league. Some players do buy into his vision, hence the calibre of player he’s able to attract and keep at Goodison Park.

Everton’s academy is widely recognised as one of the best in the country. Martínez, taking inspiration from La Masia at Barcelona, plays a hands-on role in the club’s youth development programme and has helped introduce European coaching concepts such as futsal and rondos into the mainstream at academy level. The results have been impressive, and it’s clearly paying dividends for Everton’s age group sides.

Martínez is still a flawed entity at the top level of English football. Time will tell if he’s able to learn from his mistakes and make the next step in achieving consistent results in the Premier League. Maybe a touch more pragmatism wouldn’t go amiss after all.

Liverpool fans salute their manager in 2014. Photograph: Matt West/BPI/Rex Shutterstock

27 April 2014 offered a watershed moment that would come to define Brendan Rodgers’ time as Liverpool manager. The team were playing a system that drew its tactical inspiration from Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich team and had won 11 matches in a row. Finally, they seemed destined to win the one title that they so craved.



They welcomed third-placed Chelsea to Anfield believing that they would sweep José Mourinho’s team aside in the way they had beaten Arsenal (5-1) and Everton (4-0) before them. With Liverpool’s closest rivals for the league, Manchester City, still to play their crucial game in hand, they had the opportunity to open up a six-point gap at the top of the table: an almost unsurpassable lead that Manuel Pellegrini’s men would have struggled to overturn. They hadn’t, however, reckoned on football’s chief party pooper proving once again that he’s the master of the game’s dark arts.

Chelsea sat deep and deprived Liverpool’s pacy attacking players of the space in which they usually thrived. The home side, nervous to secure a vital three points and thus move closer to the league title, stretched the play, went too gung-ho in search of a crucial opener and were promptly punished by the savvy visitors.

I don’t change in relation to how we want to work and play Brendan Rodgers

It’s a poignant football anecdote. When gaps failed to appear, a Liverpool team striving to achieve something akin to Total Football fell short. As is so often the case with teams attempting to play in this way, players not of the calibre of Lionel Messi, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi were unable to counter and passes became overly lateral. Rodgers, like Martínez, sought to draw on Guardiola’s success and implement a similar system in England, but his preoccupation with playing “perfect football” backfired as Rodgers was unwilling to mix things up when it mattered most.

“I was due to fly out to spend a few days with him when he was at Barcelona but my trip was cancelled because of the ash cloud,” said Rodgers while at Liverpool. “His love and passion of football, his great principles and ideas and the confidence he gives to people. I’ve admired him from the outside looking in, at the courage he has showed to play the modern game.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise that a team coached by a man who once mused that, “If you have possession of the ball you have a 79% chance of winning,” failed to turn sideways passes into meaningful attempts on goal. Liverpool were better on the break, and José Mourinho knew this. It was a titanic clash of footballing styles: Rodgers wanted to dominate the ball and Mourinho was intent on spoiling play. The home side had a staggering 73% of possession, but stats such as these sometimes only serve to mask the reality. They were unable to adapt to the situation at hand, which is perhaps unsurprising given Rodgers once said of his philosophy: “I don’t change in relation to how we want to work and play.”

On the face of it, what transpired really shouldn’t have been that shocking. Mourinho, of course, was engaged in a long-standing spat with Guardiola during his time at Real Madrid and can, in many ways, be seen as the footballing antithesis to managers who favour possession-based play.

“People talk about style and flair but what is that?” he remarked during his time at Chelsea. “Sometimes I ask myself about the future and maybe the future of football is a beautiful, green grass carpet without goals, where the team with more ball possession wins the game.” It was sardonic irony at its finest, but an indicator of just how much he reviled the growing obsession with possession-based football.

After City won their game in hand, Liverpool buckled under the pressure, collapsing in inauspicious circumstances away at Crystal Palace and giving the title to City. They’d blown their big chance and key players knew it. When Luis Suárez and then Raheem Sterling left in search of Champions League football and titles, Liverpool failed to recover.

Not all of the blame can be apportioned to Rodgers, who also did a lot of good during his time at Anfield, but Liverpool’s owners saw little to no progression in results during his tenure, and he was sacked in October 2015 after a 1-1 derby draw at local rivals Everton.

It was Rudyard Kipling who once wrote that: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” He’s suggesting that two forces that are diametrically opposed should never mingle, but if Martínez and Rodgers are to fulfil their early potential they will have to disregard the poet’s sentiment and add extra elements to their fairly one-dimensional gameplans. After all, football is a simple game that’s about one thing and one thing only: winning.

• This article appeared first on These Football Times

• Follow Patrick Boyland and These Football Times on Twitter