By Alan Pattullo

Copyright scotsman

It was, he accepted, a very strange way to make a living. “We travelled all over the world and people booed us everywhere we went,” recalled Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist in Bob Dylan’s backing band The Hawks on the tour when the singer controversially ‘went electric’. “We’d go on to the next town, and they’d boo us again. All over the world! I’ll tell you, it thickens the skin a little.” Apologies if it’s a bit of a stretch to link Russell Martin’s nascent and already troubled Rangers project with a singer’s initially unpopular repudiation of his folk background. However, this quote is called to mind every time the Ibrox side play at present. The jeers, aimed not so much at the players as the seemingly unbowed figure of Martin, have become simply routine on Desolation Row – aka Ibrox – in recent weeks. A way of life, almost. It’s undoubtedly a strange, possibly even masochistic, way to make a living. The Worst Manager In The History Of Rangers Football Club – which is how Martin was described in an article on the main Rangers fans’ forum this week, as if it’s not even up for debate any longer – took his place for a pre-match press conference at 9.10 am at Ibrox on Friday morning. United States-based chairman Andrew Cavenagh had flown in late the previous evening in what some might have felt was an ominous development. Not so Martin, who claims the visit had been in the diary as long as two weeks ago. It’s possible that Cavenagh had in fact pre-booked this trip, not that the multi-millionaire, who has his own private jet, needs to log on to flight company websites and try to fathom baggage restrictions. A League Cup quarter-final tie against Hibs is undeniably attractive, although the attendance in these febrile times in Govan might not reflect this – some reports claim it could be lower than 20,000. The game does hand the under-fire Martin a chance to reach Hampden at a time when he could use a boost – to put it mildly. Whether he makes it into the squad photograph for 2025-26, understood to be scheduled for next week, remains to be seen. The thought of the players and, it’s assumed, Martin assembling for a photograph likely to be used on such items of club merchandise as calendars might be an unpalatable one for many Rangers fans. Photoshop techniques are advancing all the time, so it is of course possible to remove Martin should this become necessary. But, as it stands, the manager enjoys continued support within the club. He remains front and centre of the picture. Outside, it’s another story. Martin can barely make it out of the tunnel before it begins. Booooooo! Once the game kicks off, he might bend down to retrieve a ball that’s gone out of play. Boooo! He makes a substitution. Boooo! Fixes his hair. Boooo! He can’t do anything right for doing wrong. Someone else might have seen the team-bonding excursion to Loch Lomond earlier this week hailed as a reasonable response to the run of awful results and toxic atmosphere of games. Get out in the open air, splash about a bit in the water. If someone like Sean Dyche had proposed the outing, it would be acclaimed as genius. Because it’s Martin, vegan and politically left of centre, it’s condemned for being weird and new age-y. “This city’s so intense, the club’s so intense, I think to step away from it sometimes is a good thing,” he explained – or at least tried to. “Lads can take a breath, actually spend some time together where they’re not just playing football and being worked.” Sounds sensible. This, though, is football. This is Glasgow. Even the players knew how it would be perceived. “Everything we do at this club is highlighted,” said Liam Kelly, whose appearance at the press conference suggested he would be Rangers’ last line of defence against Hibs rather than Jack Butland. “We get that and understand it. There was no harm in it. But I get why it makes the news.” Martin was even criticised for sending the players up Conic Hill in the wrong type of footwear. Many were wearing trainers, when, according to one fan/amateur hillwalker, a good pair of sturdy walking boots was required. The complaint about footwear echoes the unease over Martin’s disavowing of brown brogues, the staple for Rangers managers in modern times. Some people think he’s trolling the support. Sometimes you do wonder. One can only imagine what the reaction will be if does not play Nico Raskin against Hibs having confirmed the Belgian midfielder, who’s been out in the cold in recent weeks, will return to the matchday squad. Questioned why he felt confident results will come, he repeated how “brilliant” the players have been in training this week. “What I want to see is a team that plays with the intensity and the togetherness that I see on the training pitch,” he said. “And I saw it at the top of the hill after a long walk.” Rangers fans are still waiting to see it at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon – or 5.45pm, when the Hibs match, which is being shown live on Premier Sports, is due to kick-off, following an earlier planned protest organised by fans’ group the Union Bears. While Martin admits his professional pride has been hurt, he isn’t taking it personally. “I don’t know any of them, they don’t know me,” he said. He had some words of support for chief executive Patrick Stewart, who has joined him in the line of fire. The Union Bears want him out, too. “I think this club has been used by some individuals over the last however long to come here and progress their career, to have the status of being attached to the football club in the city, and enjoy that,” said Martin, with characters such as erstwhile CEO James Bisgrove seemingly in his sights. “There’s been a lot of people come and go that have had that bit of it and enjoyed that bit of it. And in Patrick, in the ownership, in Kevin (Thelwell, sporting director), you’ve got people that actually really care about making this club sustainable and successful again.” To go forward, they’re currently going backwards. Not since 1978-79 have they gone so long without a league win at the start of a season, hence why the likes of Gordon Smith, who was in that team, have been popping up in newspapers questioning the players’ mental strength. This might seem rich until you consider Smith et al managed to lift themselves out of the domestic gloom to engineer an aggregate victory over Juventus in the European Cup amid the terrible league run. While they did get back on some kind of track in the league, finishing three points behind champions Celtic, it was the domestic cups where they excelled. John Greig’s side won both, beating Aberdeen and Hibs in the League and Scottish Cup finals respectively. With the league title seemingly out of reach already, and the Europa League the tallest of tall orders, this might be all that’s left for Martin to aim for. Come Saturday night, it could be just the Scottish Cup that’s left available domestically speaking. If that is the case, who imagines for a second that Martin will still be around in January for the start of that campaign? No chance. Not even Rangers’ admirably patient owners can afford to hang around that long for results to turn.