Gold mine of talent let Martinez down
TIM HOWARD believes Everton’s next manager will be “sitting on a gold mine” of talent and has denied the players plotted to get Roberto Martinez the sack.
Martinez was dismissed on Thursday following another underwhelming Premier League campaign and left Everton’s Finch Farm training base early yesterday morning for the final time after collecting his belongings.
Everton want Southampton manager Ronald Koeman to replace him, but face a battle to convince the Dutchman to quit St Mary’s and move to Merseyside, where he would be handed a huge transfer kitty by new major shareholder Farhad Moshiri.
Howard, who will make his 414th and final appearance for the club against Norwich tomorrow before moving back to MLS, says whoever takes over will inherit a pool of talent who let themselves down.
“This team is good enough to compete near the top,” said the American keeper. “The foundation is there.
“The next manager that comes in will be delighted to see some of the faces here at his disposal and to be able to mould that team, play the way he wants to.
“He will be sitting on a gold mine.
“The players have probably let ourselves down. Any time a manager loses his job, they can’t replace 22 of us, which is probably unfortunate for them. It is always the manager who ends up suffering. I continually say that Roberto has not kicked a ball all season. That is down to us. The results have not been good enough for the talent we have. That is no secret. “Any time that happens, there is a moment of selfreflection. The decision has been made, Roberto is gone and we all played a part in it. “That is the bad part of the business. It sucks. He is a good manager, a good man. You have look in the mirror and figure out what went wrong.” Howard has spent a decade at Goodison Park after moving from Manchester United and rejected accusations his teammates deliberately downed tools after losing faith in Martinez’s methods. “That is a grenade people throw and they duck and watch to see what happens,” he said. “It’s just a load of rubbish. There is so much in the head of a footballer. You pull that shirt on, you run out on the pitch and the last thing that crosses your mind is, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea, I’m just going to strut around here because I am going to get the manager sacked – that’s a great idea, let’s do that!’
“I don’t know how that works. I don’t feel anyone thinks like that individually. We don’t sit around in the dressing room and have a pow-wow that we are all going to down tools.”
Joe Royle and David Unsworth will take the reins tomorrow, with Howard, who will join Colorado Rapids, adamant that failure to win any silverware while at the club will not mar his stay.
“It is hard to look back with any type of regret,” he said. “It has been a brilliant time. We did everything we could to try to win trophies.
“I always talk about John Terry. He is a bigger and better player than I’ve ever been and he will walk away thinking, ‘I wish I had got that one, I wish I had got this one’ – and his trophy cabinet is overflowing.”
‘It’s always the manager who suffers’