It is somewhat ironic that it may well be Russell Martin, whose credentials for taking on the magnitude of the Rangers job were bizarrely derided in some quarters due to his progressive outlook, supposedly ‘woke’ politics and even his veganism, that is the man to finally show the cojones to do what is necessary at Ibrox.
For all that he later said on Monday that his scorched earth appraisal of his side’s efforts in their fortunate draw at Fir Park a few days earlier were said from a place of love, it was a bold move to so publicly berate his players after the first Premiership encounter of the season.
But do you know what? Maybe it needed to be said. Too often in football there are private words for the dressing room and a defence of the players in public, with managers reluctant to do their talking through the media.
But the flip side of the coin is that the manager is then being disingenuous with the supporters, who are a great deal savvier than many ‘football men’ would care to acknowledge. A fan is not a mushroom, to paraphrase the old saying, who is happy to be fed s*** and be kept in the dark. You can’t tell them that they aren’t in fact seeing what they have just witnessed with their own eyes.
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Not that the likes of Phillipe Clement didn’t try. Whatever benefit the Belgian got from banging on about shots on target and entries into the box or whatever after his players had yet again let him, the fans and the club down wasn’t evident on the park, and it certainly didn’t do his own case any good in the court of public opinion.
In fact, he came across as wholly ridiculous when he tried to tell fans of one of the biggest clubs in the country how his team had been unlucky to lose dismally to the likes of Queen’s Park, when he should have been deploying the flamethrower.
So used to that approach of old have we become though that the bracing honesty exhibited by Martin at the weekend hits us between the eyes as though we've stepped on a rake, but he was letting the fans know that he sees exactly what they see.
It wasn’t long mind before some among the chattering classes were expressing concerns that the Rangers manager may be risking losing the dressing room so early in his tenure, and that some of his players may now down tools. Even more than they did for large parts of that shambolic second half in Lanarkshire.
If that is the case, though, then these players are not cut out to play for Rangers in any case. And if Martin backs up his words with action, their feet are unlikely to touch the floor.
When Clement deployed diplomacy after disaster, that was interpreted by the fans as a tacit acceptance of something they have long suspected throughout various regimes in both the boardroom and the dugout - that there is no longer any consequence for failure at Rangers. That second best is fine.
What Martin’s words on Saturday night signal by contrast is that he will not put up with players who seem to think that putting in a shift at a place like Fir Park is beneath them. That it is ok to turn it on when it’s Celtic or a European night and then try to get by doing the bare minimum against the rest.
Such a culture has pervaded the club for far too long. It is why they have ended up spilling points all over the place and why they invariably end up streets behind Celtic at the top of the league come May. Or many months before.
Usually, it has been the manager. But this time, with the new owners four square behind their controversial choice as their first Rangers head coach, it may well be that some of the players are in for a rude awakening.
Various theories have abounded around which two players Martin was referring to when he singled them out for jogging around and doing what they wanted to do at Fir Park, rather than sprinting as hard as the Motherwell players were and following the game plan.
Stating that the issues with self-preservation - as he put it - had been around Ibrox for years hinted that club captain James Tavernier may have been one of them, while another spot of wishful thinking on behalf of some of the support suggested that the other may have been the oft-maligned Kieran Dowell.
As neither player was withdrawn from the action at Fir Park, their exclusion from the team that faced Viktoria Plzen last night was likely more tactical than anything else.
Martin has to accept his own part in the neutering of the likes of Nicolas Raskin and Mohamed Diomande as they come to terms with the reconfiguration of the midfield to accommodate Joe Rothwell, but what if it were more popular players and more valuable assets such as them who were in fact in the manager’s crosshairs? As Raskin's omission from last night's line-up on the back of getting the hook at Fir Park may hint?
It shouldn’t matter. Clearing out the dugout hasn’t done much good so far. Clearing out a few egos though may finally be the way to waft out the stench of failure that has lingered around Ibrox for far too long.
Whether Martin, his tactics and his methods are up to the job of restoring Rangers to being the top dog in the country or not – or at least putting up some sort of fight for the position – remains to be seen. But fair play to him, I say, for nailing his colours to the mast.
It’s his way, or the highway. Whatever you think of his approach, he is determined to live or die by it, and not by the whims of a few players who seem to think that they know better.
Drawing at Motherwell can hardly be construed as a good start to his reign, but shifting the Ibrox power dynamic away from a dressing room (the core of which has seen off boss after boss) and towards the dugout once again may be far more valuable in the long run than those two spilled points.
