Me neither. He's finished 16th twice, 15th and 18th. The previous 4 seasons before he arrived they finished 10th, 17th, 14th and 11th.
He's brought them down if anything.
First year form was the first half a season, the second half was poo, its pretty common for at least one promoted side to have an awesome run based on confidence/form of the previous season, a few injuries, tiredness and a couple losses and it generally goes out the window, this happened to Wigan, that explains the 50 point first season.
They've been between 38-45 points since then basically, while wages were low, they doubled their first year in the prem, and increased by 10mil for 2 seasons after that, since then its gone backwards. They got to a point where debt had gone from 30ish mil getting promotion to down in the first year due to the initially low wages and massive increase in tv money, from there the debt went from around 20mil to 68mil in 2-3 years, and has barely grown under Martinez. they were effectively a growing club in the first few years with a growing squad, and since then spending is down while in general average wages are up in all other clubs. They've reduced spending while everyone else has increased spending. A club standing still for the past four years would have seen wages increase by a decent amount, while Wigan are one of the only teams to reduce spending(outside of those like Newcastle and those in dire trouble trying to drop wages, and almost all of those, Bolton, Blackburn, Portsmouth, Newcastle(at the time), got relegated already).
At almost every stage they've been in the prem they've had the smallest revenue and smallest wages. Almost everyone with revenue anywhere near where they were are already relegated.
In 2009/10 Wigan had the smallest revenue at £43mil, the teams above them, Burnley with £45mil, Hull with £47mil, Bolton with £54mil, Brum with £56mil, Blackburn with £58mil, Stoke with £60mil, Portsmouth with £60mil, Wolves with £61mil, Sunderland with £65mil.
The teams that have stayed a little safer than Wigan have 50% more income almost, the teams that didn't, all got dropped, most into financial trouble, a couple in absolute freefall.
However through all that Martinez has stayed up playing half decent to watch football, and had the courage to be whipping boys playing proper football which has meant some high scoring entertaining games for viewers. I'll take both their better to watch wins and highly entertaining goal fest losses, than watching Brum draw their way to safety in the most boring way possible, and Stoke kick, punch, elbow, stamp, shirt pull and generally foul their way to safety.
Why are they down the bottom, an inability to afford better defenders, better defenders ask for more money and then end up at clubs who can pay more, not much more than that.
They could have probably done better buying "stoke" type players, cheap players who just kick everyone, offer very little to the fans watching(their own or others) and been another physical awful team to watch in the league. People like Martinez because on a shoestring budget he's at least tried to play football. Teams get relegated, so what, its not ultimate failure, its part of football, its supposed to happen, the team with the smallest budget and smallest wage bill SHOULD struggle most seasons.
and then the demise!
.