Russell Martin has passed the point of no return with the Rangers support, argues Graeme McGarry. No matter what he does from here, the fans have turned on him, and the Ibrox board are only delaying the inevitable.
Sometimes in this game, the jokes write themselves. Russell Martin’s decision to take his Rangers players wild swimming in Loch Lomond, days after another dismal display in defeat to Hearts left them languishing in tenth place in the Premiership, felt almost too easy to send up.
This was a man, clearly, who was out of his depth. Floundering, in a sink or swim moment, having been thrown in at the deep end. Not waving, but drowning. It was all there. Sub-editors, social media wags and radio phone-ins have had a field day with it.
Rumours swept Glasgow that after their post-swim walk up Conic Hill, the Rangers players were booked in for a slot at the Time Capsule before heading up to Blair Drummond, as Martin bid to rid his men of the ‘anxiety’ currently crippling them when they step onto the football field. In fairness, the new train that goes around Chimp Island is pretty decent.
Outside of pre-season training, if you see professional footballers out on ‘team-building exercises’ then you can bet your bottom dollar that things aren’t going so well. You rarely see a player who is part of a team flying high at the top of the table holding a paintball gun or zooming around Knockhill.
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It brought back memories of the infamous army training camp Gary Caldwell – who had started his Partick Thistle reign with four defeats and a draw - subjected his players to a few years back, where they were kidnapped by the SAS, blindfolded, put into headlocks and then forced to complete a gruelling day of physical challenges.
Kris Doolan later recalled that Belgian midfielder Brice Ntambwe mounted a desperate escape bid and had to be brought down by four soldiers, while forward Jack Storer was reduced to tears.
Taking his men for a dip in a frigid Loch Lomond in mid-September isn’t quite up there with that ordeal in terms of shock value for Martin’s players, and in fairness to the embattled Rangers manager, sometimes these things can have merit. Of the multiple sticks the fans could use to beat him with (metaphorically, I should add) this is way down near the bottom.
He’s at the stage now though where anything he does, short of handing in his resignation letter, will be pulled apart. In the eyes of the Rangers fans, just as on the pitch, he can’t win. But there is a time and a place.
The Rangers players clearly are anxious at the moment and inhibited in their play, but my feeling is that it is coming just as much from their confusion over what they are supposed to be doing on the pitch rather than the pressure coming from the stands.
However well-meaning this adventure day was, it could easily be argued that an extra day on the training pitch giving them some clear tactical instructions would have been time better spent. Because no one, but no one, can see what it is that Martin is attempting to achieve here.
Putting the swimming puns and the widespread mirth the rest of Scottish football are enjoying at Rangers’ expense aside, the real issue at Ibrox right now appears to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the club from the top down. The longer that the Rangers football department and the new ownership allow Martin to tread water (sorry, couldn’t resist one more) then the more they put themselves firmly in the crosshairs of the supporters.
Before long, it won’t just be the manager who stars in those banners de rigueur among the Glasgow football scene featuring the faces of reviled figures scored through with a red line. Martin in fact reached the end of the line with the fans weeks ago, but their reluctance to do the necessary undermines trust in the men who put him there in the first place.
On the one hand, what they are attempting with Martin makes perfect sense. Rangers have been stuck in a death loop for years. They hire a manager. They can’t topple a Celtic side that for all their own troubles this summer, maintain huge advantages over them. The fans get angry. Ibrox turns toxic. The manager is fired. The process starts again.
That Andrew Cavenagh, Paraag Marathe et al would look to break the club out of this cycle of despair is entirely logical, and even laudable. Trouble is, and they acknowledged as much at the start of the season, their man had to show something early on, even as he was building his side.
Martin was right about one thing last weekend in that the majority of the Rangers support didn’t want him in their dugout in the first place. But that was all the more reason why he needed a few wins to buy some time, particularly when coming up against teams who were also reconstructing squads on a fraction of the budget. Even the slightest semblance of a plan or a style beyond passing it between the centre-backs would be something.
Clearly though, Rangers have backed the wrong horse. The gamble in appointing Martin – and it was a huge gamble - hasn’t paid off, and with their continuing backing of him they are now into sunk cost fallacy territory.
There is an old proverb that is brought to mind in such situations – when you are on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. It was a philosophy adopted by Bayer Leverkusen recently when they binned former Manchester United manager Erik ten Haag after just two competitive matches, with sporting director Simon Rolfes remarking: “[We] just had the feeling that things were heading in a direction that wasn't the right one. Before we reach the wrong destination, we decided to make the decision now.”
With Martin at the helm, Rangers are careening towards a broken bridge over a canyon. They have to apply the brakes now, even if means holding their hands up to their error. They would gain more respect from the fans if they did so.
As it is, Martin will be in the Ibrox dugout once more on Saturday evening when Hibs come calling in the quarter finals of the Premier Sports Cup. He will likely be booed as he emerges from the tunnel, just as he was after half time in the weekend defeat to Hearts. This time though, there will be far fewer Rangers fans there to show their disdain, which is the most worrying thing of all for the Ibrox hierarchy.
Cavenagh will be in attendance to see anger spill into apathy on Saturday. But with Europa League packages to shift, fans withholding their cash may be the only thing that really gets the attention of men normally stationed thousands of miles away from the Ibrox maelstrom.
Whether it is over their disastrous start to the domestic season, the poor recruitment, their pitiful league position, the thumping at the hands of Club Brugge, the rift between manager and star player Nico Raskin or even the comparatively trivial matter of taking a dook by the bonnie banks, the rest of Scottish football are having a rare old time chuckling away at Rangers’ expense.
Their fans are fed up being the butt of the joke. To them, Martin’s tenure has long since ceased to be amusing, and everyone but the men in charge of Rangers seem to know the only thing that would put a smile back on their face.
