Premier League Weekend Review: When does a bad start become a crisis for Martinez?

Roberto Martinez...thin value on his spending so far

Everton smashed their transfer record in the summer and talked about breaking into the Champions League. Instead they are a place above the relegation zone and Ralph Ellis sees more worrying signs ahead...

David de Gea stole the headlines; Louis van Gaal gave the best quotes - and then later in the day Arsene Wenger got in a shoving match with Jose Mourinho to wipe all of them off the back pages.

All of which must come as a bit of a relief to Roberto Martinez, because as the international break begins nobody seems to be asking questions about why Everton have made such a desperate start to what was meant to be a breakthrough season.

Go from the bottom of the table and there's little doubt Harry Redknapp is in big trouble trying to keep Queens Park Rangers up. Burnley are also on four points and struggling with a thin, inexperienced squad. Then there's Newcastle where Alan Pardew is still odds on to be the next manager to lose his job. And just two points above all three of them sit Everton.

Martinez is the manager who persuaded his board to smash their transfer record by paying 28million for one player in striker Romelu Lukaku. He got them to finance huge contracts to take Gareth Barry from Manchester City and Samuel Eto'o from Chelsea.

There was much optimism. Pre-season the Toffees were matched as low as 1.618/13 for a top six finish and a super optimistic 5.04/1 to break into the top four. Now they are priced at 2.8615/8 and 16.015/1 respectively and the return on the spending looks pretty thin.

Lukaku has just two goals, Eto'o has only played one full game, and Barry at times has begun to look like a thirty something trying to handle the pace of the modern midfield. Other teams have worked out they can exploit the space behind Everton's full backs, and Tim Howard, fresh from getting praise from his President for brilliant contributions to the USA's World Cup campaign, is finding himself too often on the hairy end of a coconut shy.

Listen to Martinez after games and he's a man in denial. I quizzed him after his second string side had been knocked out of the Capital One Cup at Swansea and he was insisting what a great night it had been. I thought Tony Hibbert had probably needed his legs untied at half time after getting twisted this way and that by the Swans winger Jefferson Montero - Martinez was insisting how well the veteran full back had played.

Now Everton's early fixture list has been tough - they have already played Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal and United. But the point about the big money was that it should have equipped them to get a decent return from those games - and definitely more than one win from the others against Leicester, West Brom and Palace.

Martinez is fortunate that nobody is yet labelling Everton's position a crisis. Despite their precarious early position fourth from bottom, you wouldn't think of wasting even two pounds on backing them at the current price of 120.0119/1 for relegation. But laying them at 1.211/5 a top ten finish might be a tad more tempting.

There are problems to come. John Stones limped away from Old Trafford with a nasty looking injury, and the creative flair of Ross Barkley is unlikely to be available until at least November. A kinder looking group of Premier League fixtures in the next two months will be made tougher by Europa League games.

The spotlight is off Martinez for now, but if he doesn't turn some results round quickly then questions will begin to get asked.