Frustrated Everton manager Roberto Martinez took a swipe at West

Bromwich Albion’s negative approach during their 1-0 win at Goodison

Park.

An early goal from Albion’s Salomon Rondon was enough to inflict a

sixth home defeat of the campaign upon Martinez’s team on Saturday after

the visitors spent much of the remainder of the game wasting time with

Ben Foster and Darren Fletcher both being booked by referee Michael

Oliver for the offence. 

“It’s part of football but it’s disappointing,” Martinez said. “When

you buy your ticket and pay a lot of money you want to see teams going

eye to eye, with their own ways of playing, their own ways of winning

games. 

“You want to see football, you don’t want to see the ball out of play

that long and I think referees should be a little bit stronger. 

“Foster was rightly booked but if that booking was in the first 15 minutes it would have had a bigger effect.”

Only Crystal Palace, with seven, have lost more home league games

than Everton this season and, having matched the six home defeats of

2011-12, they are now on target for the worst home performance for a

decade, since losing seven times under David Moyes in 2006.

“It’s the truth that we have lost six times at home. We’ve been so

strong away from home and that’s always the hardest issue, where you get

tested,” Martinez added.

“We have the best away record we’ve had for a long time and we were really looking forward to getting a fortress here. 

“But that hasn’t been the case and we have to change that. It’s

something we need to work hard to get back because if we do that we will

be very close to doing something special in this league.”

Meanwhile, Albion manager Tony

Pulis remained unrepentant about his team’s approach as he left

Merseyside with West Brom now as close to the top six places as they are

the relegation positions.

“I think what you’ve got to recognise if that the Premier League is not a level playing field,” Pulis said. 

“There are clubs who have players, budgets, facilities a lot better than ourselves. 

“You’ve got to find a way of winning and that’s what I’m trying to do. 

“When we’ve had our full team this season we’ve played a lot of good stuff but we’ve dipped off for all sorts of reasons. 

“But we’re in the fifth round of the FA Cup and have 32 points with

12 games to go so hopefully we can have a really good end to the

season.” 

West Brom’s approach did not go down well with the home supporters

and fiery winger James McClean was involved in a verbal spat with fans

as he came off following a yellow card and Pulis appeared to have a

water bottle thrown in his direction late in the game.

“I’ve had worse thrown at me,” joked Pulis. “But whether that’s true

or not about James, there were things going on with the crowd that I

don’t want to get into. 

“If James’ got involved, I’ll speak to him.”

However, a bonus for the visitors was a first league start for

striker Saido Berahino since the last day of October, with the

controversial figure now remaining with the club until the end of the

season after the January transfer window closed.

“He is still way off (fitness) and it’s going to take a while to get it back,” Pulis said. 

“One of the biggest issues at this club is we haven’t had Saido for the first part of the season.”