Roberto Martinez in the times.

[Jack]

It is not without irony, at a time when many are bemoaning the top clubs’ preference for foreigners over managers from the lower divisions, that the hottest property outside the Premier League is currently Swansea City’s Roberto Martinez, who is as English as paella.

Only just turned 35, the man from Bala-guer, midway between Barcelona and Zaragoza, is about to take Swansea into the Championship on the same shoestring budget with which they won League One by a country mile last season. Martinez’s most expensive signing in 18 months in charge at the Liberty Stadium is Ashley Williams, for whom he has just paid Stockport County £350,000, and in total he has spent a miserly £500,000 on six players to equip the Welsh club with a Spanish accent for the higher level.

Swansea, unlike their traditional rivals, Cardiff City, do not spend money they haven’t got, and it is a matter of pride that they are climbing football’s pyramid again, after a nadir that saw them flirt with the Conference five years ago, without going into the red. Their barnstorming progress [they finished 10 points clear of runners-up Nottingham Forest] reflects considerable credit not only on the young manager, but also on the board who plucked him from playing obscurity at Chester and put him in charge in February 2007.

If Martinez was a punt by the Swansea directors, it was hardly a blindfold and pin job. He had impressed as officer material during four seasons with them as a player, latterly as captain, and came from promising stock. His father, also Roberto – “my inspiration” – was a well-respected manager in Spain’s lower leagues.

To begin at the beginning, Roberto Jr joined Real Zaragoza at 16 and was playing in La Liga, as a constructive midfielder, when serendipity reared its head. Dave Whelan, who had just bought Wigan Athletic, was in Spain to open one of his JJB Sports stores, took in a game at Zaragoza and was impressed by three of their players: Martinez, Jesus Saba and Isidro Diaz. All three were talked into forsaking sun and sexy football for the dubious delights of an unprepossesssing rugby league town in England’s industrial northwest.

To call it a culture shock doesn’t come close. Martinez, who became English football’s first Bosman signing from Spain, takes up the story: “Mr Whelan came to the three of us after the game and said, ‘I’ve bought a football club in England. It is in League Two, but I’m going to give them a new stadium and get them into the Premiership in five years’.” All right, it took him 10 years, but you don’t get many chairmen who deliver on promises like that.

“I came over when I was quite young, 22, and immediately had to think differently,” Martinez said. “After La Liga, I was playing in the lower leagues, where the theory was that you couldn’t be successful trying to play football, you had to be physical. It was a daily fight to stay in the team because I was never physical, I was a technical player who relied on passing the ball.”

If the football was a shock, the environment was even more so. “In 1995 Wigan was different,” Martinez explained. “Now you can find whatever you want, socially or in the supermarket. Back then it was a dark, cold place where everything shut early. Playing at the old Springfield Park on a wet winter night was something else. It was difficult to adjust, but there were three of us and we helped each other rather than allowing it to get us down.” After six seasons and 227 appearances as a Latic, Martinez moved further north for a brief sojourn at Motherwell. “I signed for three years but the club went into administration after 10 months, so I came down to Walsall, in the Championship.”

Fast forward to January 2003, and his arrival at Swansea as a player. “We were six points adrift at the bottom of League Two and everyone seemed to accept we were going into the Conference. Everyone but the manager, Brian Flynn. He told me he was determined to get out of trouble playing good football and I knew he meant it, because I wasn’t the sort of player you would want in a dogfight. It was a fantastic finale. Over the last 19 games we produced promotion form, and it was the kick in the backside Swansea City needed. It set the tone for what has happened since.”

Flynn’s successor, Kenny Jackett, pensioned off Martinez as a player in May 2006, only to be succeeded by him nine months later. “I never applied for the job, and taking it was a big decision for me because I had another 18 months on my contract at Chester and have always said you should play the game for as long as you can,” Martinez said. “There’s nothing better than being a footballer, being a manager is only second best.”

He took to the job like a Swan to water. After finishing seventh at the end of his first half-season, the Spaniard sold the fans’ favourite, Lee Trundle, to Bristol City for £1m, using the money to build a team to his own aesthetic requirements. “I brought in some new faces and put together a strong squad,” he said. “We gelled and when everything came together we went 18 games unbeaten to win the title. Other clubs had more money and bigger names, but our collective attitude and work ethic made us stronger. That and being tactically adaptable. You need to be able to adapt and our squad was good enough to do that.

“We can play in different ways, but we always like to get the ball down and build from the back, and that won’t change. We rely on the quality of our passing, and we’ll look to do that in the Championship.”

Who’s come up and gone down in the Football League

THE CHAMPIONSHIP
Upscaling:Swansea and two-time European champions Nottingham Forest secured automatic promotion from League One, while Doncaster had to come through the playoffs, beating Yorkshire rivals Leeds in the final
Downsizing:Derby County were so far off the rest in the Premier League that they should have started playing in the Championship by New Year. Reading and Birmingham went down on the last day of the season but have kept managers Alex McLeish and Steve Coppell

LEAGUE ONE
Upscaling:MK Dons won the League Two title but lost manager Paul Ince to Blackburn. He has been replaced by Roberto Di Matteo. Hereford United and Peterborough, along with playoff winners Stockport County, secured the remaining promotion spots
Downsizing:Colchester and Scunthorpe were way off the pace at the bottom of the Championship but Leicester were not relegated until the final day of the season when they drew with Stoke. Manager Ian Holloway departed

LEAGUE TWO
Upscaling:Two clubs come up from the Blue Square Premier. They are Aldershot and Exeter City, both former football league clubs, the latter beating Cambridge United in the playoff
Downsizing:Luton never recovered from the 10 points they were docked for going into administration. Bournemouth suffered a similar punishment but held on till the last day of the season when they were relegated. Joining them in the drop to League Two are Port Vale and Gillingham

92
Points won by Roberto Martinez’s Swansea – a club record – in winning League One last season to end a 24-year absence from English football’s second tier. The club finished 10 points ahead of their nearest rivals

a very good read from a swans point of veiw lol but heres a link to it on the times website.
Roberto Martinez has eyes on the prize | Football League - Times Online