I’ve never thought Martins was a top player. Don’t get me wrong, his goals have probably saved us from going down for 2 seasons and scoring 12-15 goals is decent going [17 in the first season possibly ?] but scoring spectacular goals just doesn’t make up for missing the bread and butter ones through lack of composure, or his general inability to make the right decisions in team play.
He’s got his price which is one of the highest we have, but yesterday was a classic example. Start of the 2nd half, 2-0 up but Stoke putting us under pressure to get back into the game. Great chance to make it 3-0 and game over, missed and 30 seconds or so later its 2-1.
A GOOD striker, who gets the basics right, would have at least forced the keeper to save in that situation. Its not a one off, it just happens to often.
We have 5 or 6 good players at the club, but the rest of them are either hit and miss [Martins] or just not good enough and thats why we are in the shit and its also why we lost the lead yesterday, not really Kinnears substitutions, which were forced on him to an extent by having no options to speak of.
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I’m sorry but his sub at half time really DID have a lot to do with it, he had three strikers on the bench, a better option (i feel now and did then) would have been to bring one of them on, move Martins to the left and Zog inside. That would have still left some width on the right, no offence to Beye but he was ending up too deep and then we looked like five at the back at times.
you have a point but at the end of the game we finished with 4 centre halfs on the pitch, this says everything about the limited options and the small squad he is having to work with ?
With articles like this I can see why the forum on here is dead, the ball was too low which made it hard to get any direction on the ball, how many other easy chances has he missed? You have to go back to the Bolton game for a chance he missed similar to that.
I would rather praise him for an all round good game which included an excellent assist for Michael Owen’s second, taking the ball down from a 60 yard pass before sending a ball across the box that was nearly impossible to defend, great play.
The manager is to blame for throwing it away yesterday because of his decision to shuffle the pack which involved playing far too many players out of position,not Martins just because he missed a half chance.