The man on the up escalator living in an upside down world.
Okay so the title header may not be numerically exact, but a scribbler of the jackrabbit variety will take his muse and inspirations wherever they may be found.
Let’s cut to the chase the reason Rangers Football Club is in its present state is because the former owners had made such a monumental cock up of running the club that when our new American investors were found (or sourced) they were glad to get out and get back some of the monies they had invested or ploughed into the club to keep us afloat in the ten years since the AGM of March, 2015. Which of course was their right. These men saved us in our hour of need and they should not have been expected to finance us forever.
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That may be a harsh summation on my part and one not everyone will agree with. And if it makes me an ungrateful son of a bachelor then I’ll take that on the chin. One of the managerial appointments from their time in the boardroom that will forever be remembered and for all the wrong reasons was the wholly unfathomable decision to appoint a certain Pedro Caxhina as manager.
It goes against my personal grain here but I’m going to try and make a case in hindsight for those who took the disastrous decision to appoint the guy. Perhaps because of his success elsewhere they thought it was time to think out of the box and he that may have brought some Portuguese flair and expertise with him to Ibrox. No matter this would turn out to be an incredulous and hapless appointment, one of many that the old board will forever be remembered for.
So let’s fast forward to this summer. Whilst most of the support were happy with the takeover, some of us were still apprehensive of how overseas owners could be made aware of and come to grips with the politics that have Scottish football in a headlock. In short, how could it be explained to the 49ers ConGlom that Scottish football is basically run by a Celtic Minded cabal that will screw Rangers over at every opportunity? Try putting that one over in a Power Point Presentation or Zoom Call? They’d be forgiven for thinking the had just paid good money to enter the madhouse. But the reality is Scottish football is a madhouse run for the benefit of one club and and that one club rules the roost.
So, to the question of the new manager. It was on refection a rather subdued race to the dugout. If I recall correctly Kevin Muscat was mentioned in despatches and in late May/early June only two real candidates had emerged. David Ancelotti and Russell Martin.
Ancelotti, son and also assistant manager of the outgoing Real Madrid managerial legend was a fanciful notion and for most of us a real leap into the dark. He would have represented a huge gamble coming from the rarefied heights of life at the very top of the footballing canopy to scrabbling about in the mud and puddles in the basement which is Scottish football with no prior knowledge or experience of what was expected of him. If he was a real prospect for the job I believe it was one based on the glamour of his parental ties and not much more.
The real and more imminent danger came from the name that just wouldn’t go away and the real nagging doubt that he was in fact the main managerial target all along. Russell Martin!
I’ll happily confess that I only knew two things about Russell Martin. Firstly, there were the hazy memories of him being another in a long line of duds playing for Rangers in an era most of us would most like to keep in the recesses of the mind. Secondly and more importantly watching MOTD this time last year and being gobsmacked at the way his Southampton team were losing goals in the EPL that amateur teams would have been hard pushed to emulate. Kamikaze pilots would have swooned at what a Russell Martin defence was capable of.
Then it was made official, Martin had gotten the Rangers job. Overnight the goodwill and cheer that the American takeover had brought the fans since the end of last season had taken a nosedive, much like those Japanese pilots of yore.
Again, I’ll happily concede I’m not only a dinosaur in footballing terms but a Luddite in technological terms too. And lazy with it. A new telly? No problem, I’ll pay for it and my son, daughter or grandsons will do the tuning in and so forth. A new phone? The same setting up process as the telly.
But I’m not completely out of touch. In this ultra modern world of technology and with Data systems all to hand like never before, with managerial statistics laid out in front of you at the touch of a button. With TV coverage at almost saturation point whereby you could watch Russell Martin’s managerial tactics and systems of play not only virtually game by game but frame by frame. Then there’s his philosophy on how the game should be played there for you to watch and listen to ad nauseum as proof of what he had to offer. How could it be possible that this man’s record was scrutinised, then be interviewed in person SEVEN times and finally be acknowledged as being worthy of the role as head coach of Rangers Football Club?
There I was absolutely nothing whatsoever anywhere in Martin’s CV that suggested he had the talents or anything else in his locker that made him remotely satisfactory for the rigours and pressures for life as head coach at our club. To make it even worse. Rangers as a football club increasingly depend on a modicum of success in European competition for the financial rewards it brings. This money is vital and at the very core of club operations. It beggars belief that the people running the club deemed it acceptable that a man with no success in domestic terms and no experience whatsoever in European competition could lead us into this most important of environments?
But hey, we were stuck with him and a feeling of ‘it is what it is’ crept over us. Most of us where of the feeling well he’s here now so let’s see what he can come up with. First there were the 10-15 minute training vids, consisting of absolutely nothing. This was all part of the con and dumbing down of the support. We were all supposed to be impressed with the players in training bibs giving the training cones the slip. This was our first delve into Russworld.
Then the new players started coming in drip by drip. I don’t know who was first in the pecking order but I do remember the boy Fernandez being heralded in from Peterborough for something like £3.5m. Gullible me’s initial thought was that Martin in tandem with his newly installed superior, DoF Kevin Thelwell, had used their knowledge and experience from operating in that area and had plucked the guy out of the English lower divisions before one of the bigger English clubs swooped in for him.
Well, gullible me sure got that one wrong. To date even with the defensive calamities that have defined the Martin ‘project’ the boy is still deemed not good enough to fill the void other than as an emergency pick. Perhaps he’s the lucky one though. Max Aarons a right back of scant game time recently was brought in from Bournemouth and he was being tipped to replace Tav at right back. Then the guy from Wolves Djigga. It is safe to say at time of writing neither have been remotely close to the quality that is required at our club.
Anyway, the pre season was a mixed bag that is a waste of time looking back on. Showtime was upon us and our first competitive match saw us entertain Panathinaikos at Ibrox in the first of our CL qualifiers. I’ll sum it up for me, others may see it differently. We won 2-0 and in the end up that was the most important thing. However the result doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. To be short, blunt and to the point. Defensively we were a shambles and it is no exaggeration to say that if the Greeks had taken their chances, the Martin era would have been strangled at birth.
Most of us walked out of the game that night relieved that we were still in with a great chance of making the second round of qualifiers. This was of the utmost importance because overcoming the Greeks guaranteed us European football for the coming season. We did get through in Athens but again defensively we were in disarray but yet again we rode our luck. Something that has deserted us in many a European tie. So job done and maybe this was us easing by our teething troubles.
The league started the Saturday after Athens. The first red flag for me came in a Sky sports interview aired on the Saturday afternoon. Obviously this interview had taken place on the Thursday or Friday after the tie in Athens and before the title opener at Fir Park. When asked about the importance of getting through the other night there he was at his arrogant best telling us that the result was good but it was all about the process.
Now I stand to be corrected here but IF we had lost to the Greeks, we would have been paired with either Shaktar Donesk or RB Salzburg in the qualifiers to qualify for the Conference league. It was conceivable that we would have lost to either club and that would have meant no European football for us at all this season. Of course it is all hypothetical now and we all know what has transpired since. It’s the fact European football is so vital to the club and here we had our head coach talking as if it was of no consequence and his aims and philosophy superseded all.
Anyway, that red flag would take on a deeper hue that Saturday afternoon. Once again we were at sixes and sevens time after time defensively especially in the second half and we ended up lucky getting a point. There we were playing catch up on the opening day for the third season in a row. The misgivings at the coach’s baffling tactics were mounting.
Plzen at Ibrox the following Wednesday gave us a respite from Martin’s all compassing nightmare, if only for an hour when after a stuffy start we burst into life down the flanks with Gassama, perhaps the only new boy to gain pass marks thus far opening the scoring and teaming up with debutant Oliver Antman to give the support their Goal of the Season thus far with a third goal to virtually seal the tie.
There’s no use going over all the games since as we’ve all witnessed them for ourselves, the absolute humiliation at the hands of Brugges, the trepidation of going into playing the yahoos at Ibrox fearful of a doing and coming out relieved we didn’t. The continuing struggles against bottom to middling sides in the league and LC.
In short, we have witnessed tactically horrendous and woefully inadequate performances from the team, the likes of which we’ve never witnessed before on such a consistent manner. It is no exaggeration to say that of the drawn league games this season all could feasibly have been lost. As long ago as the third game in at Paisley, I watched us struggling against a well drilled St Mirren team and was wondering when and who we were actually going to beat? Well, we got the answer last week at Livingston. And even then it took an injury time winner from a corner kick when anything can happen. All this played against the backdrop of a support who have collectively had enough. Organised barracking of a new manager before a game in September. Unthinkable in the past.
Well, the nightmare came to an end yesterday. It will of course be remembered as being another trademark disgraceful Rangers performance under Russell Martin as we played second fiddle to newly promoted Falkirk for long spells. At one point in the first half we were treated to an astonishing statistic. Falkirk had, had at that point put SEVENTEEN crosses into the Rangers penalty box. Rangers by contrast had put in zero. That wee stat there is Russell Martin’s Rangers summed up for all to see. And I haven’t even touched on his press conferences, which could command an article on their own.
However, Martin being booted into touch is on its own a hollow victory. For me it is vitally important if the board is to regain the trust of a great many of the support who now rightly view them with suspicion. That can only be done if they inform us who exactly championed Russell Martin for the head coach’s gig at Ibrox and then ultimately sanctioned his appointment. We need to know on what basis he was hired and why?
Right now it is hard to get away from the roles Patrick Stewart and Kevin Thelwell are playing in the spectacular fall of the club in the few short months they’ve been in charge of Rangers Football Club at the Scottish end. The £8m going on potential £10m signing of a player who was signed by Thelwell for Everton when he was in the DoF role there deserves forensic scrutiny. As for the both of them bringing Thelwell’s son to Ibrox as a Director of Operations is beyond the pale and to me is a direct GIRUY to the support. A 26 y/o in charge of such a role at a football club as large as ours? Who’s zooming who?
Finally, getting back to owners past and present. There are two wee Latin words that came to sum up the Murray era for me. ‘Caveat Emptor’. Let the buyer beware. A bit of a sick joke really when it came to Murray. After all he didn’t worry about what he bought when he ruled the roost at Ibrox or the consequences. After all it was the club that footed the bill.
Up till now it looks as though we’ve got that wee Latin phrase the wrong way round when it comes to our American owners. In this instance we should beware the buyers.
I’ll repeat, Martin out of our club is a hollow victory and not enough. Stewart and the Thelwells need to go too.
tgg.