‘Martin’s excruciating Rangers era finally at a chaotic conclusion’

Back in the summer, when Davide Ancelotti, son of Carlo, looked like he was the chosen one as the new Rangers man, the bosses at Ibrox gave Russell Martin a last shot at explaining why he, and not the Italian, was the perfect fit as the great redeemer of the Govan Road.

Overnight, the word from within the club changed. Martin had “knocked it out of the park” in his address to the club’s new owners. In that “tour-de-force” interview he had turned a 40-60 situation into a 60-40 in his favour. Soon, he was announced as the new Rangers head coach.

That presentation behind closed doors was the best of it for Martin, who is the fourth Rangers boss to lose his job in less than three years following on from Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Michael Beale and Philippe Clement.

Van Bronckhorst, a ridiculous sacking who is now working for Liverpool, won the Scottish Cup and brought Rangers to the Europa League final. Beale, a rookie, at least had a good start before things turned sour. He won 13 of his first 14 games.

Martin had no case for the defence. Nothing to point to as signs of improvement. Not long ago he was asked to name a few things that were better on his watch and he couldn’t do it. There was a reason for that.

Those Rangers fans who are almost as old as the Campsie Fells, the hills sitting above the club training ground just north of Glasgow, will tell you that Martin was the worst manager they’ve ever known. And that’s saying something.

One of his predecessors, Pedro Caixinha, once lost to Progres Niederkorn, the fourth best team in Luxembourg at the time, and ended the night by rowing with Rangers fans while standing in a bush.

Martin’s end was chaotic. A draw at Falkirk saw fans once again screeching for his sacking, a pretty much constant and venomous refrain in recent times. He was smuggled out a back exit at the Falkirk Stadium with a police escort. It was unseemly. It couldn’t go on.

The draw with Falkirk followed on from other league draws against Motherwell, Dundee, St Mirren and Celtic. Hearts beat them at Ibrox. Brugge beat them 6-0 and 3-1 in Europe. Rangers had the devil’s own job in defeating Livingston. Every game was the football equivalent of fingernails down a blackboard. It was excruciating.

As were the Martin explanations in the aftermath. He ran the gamut. He spoke about his players being anxious and scared, he talked about them not doing the things they were doing in training and not listening to the messages they were being told. It was impossible to avoid the conclusion that Martin thought it was always the fault of others.

After the Falkirk draw, he mentioned Falkirk’s deflected goal and their artificial pitch. After the loss to Sturm Graz on Thursday night he banged on about a throw-in that went wrong and cost Rangers a goal. “Somebody didn’t do their job,” he said.

The excuses flowed like lava. The one person he singularly failed to put in the frame was himself. Ibrox turned against him in the most vicious way, He was booed on and booed off. When Rangers scored a late winner against Livingston the cry that went up from fans seconds later was about Martin. It wasn’t nice, put it that way.

In Martin’s case, many Rangers fans didn’t even give him a game, or if they did, they did it begrudgingly.

He was up against it from day one. An unpopular choice, some fans felt he gave off a superior air. He spoke of Rangers as a project that could only be fixed in the medium to long term when all the supporters wanted to know was how things were going to improve… yesterday.

For a dozen years and more they’ve been belittled by Celtic and, as much as Martin’s plea for patience was understandable, it was also naive. He needed to win matches or, at the very least, show signs that something worthwhile was being built. He did neither.

Martin told a story of a conversation with a club employee who told him that he felt “the tanker was turning around”. He cheerily repeated this in the media, which might have been forgivable if it had been true, but results showed that it was demonstrably untrue.

There was angst from the beginning. He dropped club captain James Tavernier from the team because he thought loanee Max Aarons was the solution at right-back. He had to do a U-turn on that. He dropped his best player, Nico Raskin, from the squad, and took a veritable age to resolve the differences between them.

None of this would have mattered had the team been on a winning run, but they toiled horribly. It emerged that the new owners had spent £21m net in the summer in assembling this squad – and close to £40m gross.

Kevin Thelwell, the sporting director, and Patrick Stewart, the chief executive, did those deals. The pair of them were confronted by an angry fan at a hotel in the wake of the loss to Sturm Graz on Thursday.

Thelwell is now bringing in his son, Robbie, as head of recruitment. Nathan Fisher, another former colleague of Thelwell’s at Everton, is coming on board, too, as head scout. They are entering a world of fury. There’s a dysfunctional air around Ibrox.

Now that Martin has gone, expect Thelwell Snr and Stewart to draw the heat in the coming weeks and months. Up to now, Martin has been a human shield, an easy punchbag, but for all the animosity he drew no Rangers fan thinks that the club’s problems began and ended with him.