Motherwell steel combines with Spanish flair to mould Martinez

The former Real Zaragoza player's status as a student of the game was already secure by then, having made occasional television appearances as a La Liga pundit prior to arriving from Wigan Athletic, and by common consensus some of his more cerebral, continental touches didn't marry up too well with the earthiness of the Scottish game. But the footprint he left was greater than the raw statistics: almost without fail his colleagues of the time speak highly of the man, while his pursuit of emerging talents such as James McCarthy and James McArthur shows that his enthusiasm for the Scottish game didn't fade entirely.

Pat Nevin, the chief executive who persuaded him to come north the first place, remembers it well – even if he had resigned by the time the redundancies to the club's 51-strong playing staff arrived. These days the Spaniard is known as an adherent of a fluid 3-5-2 shape and a passing style, but the Scotland winger-turned-BBC Sport pundit feels he is more pragmatic than many give him credit for and is convinced that those days roughing it at Motherwell still reside somewhere in his make-up.

"I immediately really liked Robbie," Nevin told Herald Sport last night. "I wouldn't have said right away 'there is an absolutely top manager' but that he could become a good coach was pretty obvious. He was a really nice guy who wanted football to be played in the specific way he wanted to play it.

"When Billy brought him in, he was a lovely player to look at but trying to do that sort of style in the Scottish Premier League became kind of difficult, because you really weren't given much time. He wasn't the quickest player and he wanted time to spray the ball about but to play that style you would have needed pretty much every player to buy into it.

"Like most people, if you are a good manager or good at anything you need to pick up information from wherever you go and merge that into your capabilities. Not long after he took over at Wigan, I went to see them playing against Everton at Goodison Park, fittingly I suppose. I was amazed, because it wasn't quite thuggery out there, but he went with a group of hard hitting, hard tackling, relatively limited football playing guys. I thought 'what on the earth is he doing? This is the antithesis of Robbie.'

"But I was impressed, too, because he realised the group of players he had wasn't capable of playing the way he wanted them to play, and that he would slowly adapt them until they could. You could be absolutely sure that he was trying to turn them into a more sophisticated football team but maybe that part was made in Motherwell, that you have to accept what you have, and accept that your presence won't just adapt players immediately. I think that is why it didn't really work for him as a player in Scotland, because he didn't really play the ugly way. But it may well be that he learned from that and put it into his coaching."

Every man and their dog appears to have an opinion about how Martinez will fare at Goodison but that particular anecdote fills Nevin with hope that their new manager can indeed build upon the formidable foundations laid by Davie Moyes.

Bill Kenwright, the chairman, clearly feels he is getting a clone of Michael Laudrup, whose shrewd recruitment from the Spanish market in the form of Michu, Julian de Guzman, Pablo Hernandez and Chico Flores and short-passing style has turned he heads of chairmen throughout England, but whether Martinez chooses to bring long term assistant and former St Johnstone player, Graeme Jones, with him, Nevin feels Martinez would be wise to surround himself with the time-served Evertonians on the coaching staff such as David Weir, Alan Stubbs and Duncan Ferguson.

"It is not just the club, it is the people, and having known them all, those guys would be brilliant together," he said. "Robbie will go for a look and he couldn't do much better than keeping Davie and Alan with their knowledge. And don't ignore the work big Duncan is doing down there either."

Martinez inherits a sizeable task to emulate Moyes but a good squad to tackle it with, even if it may perhaps be embellished by cherry-picking the likes of McCarthy, Arouna Kone, Antolin Alcaraz and maybe even Shaun Maloney from Wigan. "The players at Everton man for man are better than at Wigan," said Nevin, who spent four years at Goodison between 1988 and 1992. "They are not a typical up-and-at-'em team, they are much more than that. Robbie will definitely look to the continent but he won't try to become a miniature Barcelona overnight. He will slowly adapt it towards a style he likes and we all know what that is.

"Everton for many years were known as the School of Science, so the fans expect a bit of class. Robbie will deliver that. But whether he will deliver any more success than Davie Moyes is impossible to say."