Kai Watson: Atmosphere at Rangers is about to turn toxic
Kai Watson 
It's only early days, but it's fair to say things haven't exactly gone to plan for Russell Martin since he joined Rangers over the summer.
Three draws in a row has meant they have already lost ground to Celtic in the Scottish Premiership, and Steven Gerrard has already emerged as favourite to replace the under-fire manager with the best betting sites.
Free Bets Scottish football expert Kai Watson has taken a closer look at what has gone wrong for Martin in his time north of the border.
Russell Martin has been in charge for three Scottish Premiership games so far and all have ended 1-1. At any other club, outside of the Old Firm, this wouldn’t be such a massive deal but this is Rangers we’re talking about and a meltdown is about to ensue.
If that start wasn’t bad enough, Rangers gave away three goals in twenty minutes at home to Club Brugge last week and travel to Belgium 3-1 down with progression in the Champions League looking almost impossible. THEN after that game is the first Old Firm of the season at Ibrox next Sunday which, considering the start to the season, could turn massively toxic.
As expected, Celtic have won their three opening matches of the season meaning that Rangers are already six points behind. Defeat next week would make that nine points and a lot of fans would already be writing off any sort of challenge for the league title. It may seem early in the season for that but that would leave Rangers needing Celtic to lose three games to catch up when they only lost four in the entirety of last season.
The biggest issue, currently, for Rangers fans is that there hasn’t been any improvement since Martin’s first friendly in charge. This team is supposed to press high and aggressively whilst moving the ball quickly and putting plenty of pressure on the opposition. None of that has been evident on the pitch so far this season.
Defensively Rangers have been terrible, teams find it really easy to get through and create chances and sometimes it’s only taking one pass to split the whole team and for the opposition to be bearing down on goal. The playing out from the back also hasn’t worked so far, the centre-backs and the deepest midfielder consistently give the ball away and give their opponents the chance to build up attacks and momentum.
Everything Rangers fans were promised, both by Martin and Sporting Director Kevin Thelwell, hasn’t come to fruition and the fans are quickly losing patience, to the point some don’t even have any left.
It’s clear that the system isn’t working but, as was highlighted by many Southampton fans, Russell Martin isn’t willing to change, no matter what. He’s constantly saying in interviews that it’s going to take time and they’ve only been in the door eight weeks, or whatever the number is now, but there’s no signs that something better is coming.
There’s nothing for fans to cling on to and think ‘I can see the vision’, it’s impossible because there’s nothing there. There’s no cohesion throughout the team, the defensive shape is non-existent and there’s no creativity coming from anywhere.
The biggest criticisms of the likes of Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Michael Beale and Philippe Clement were that their tactics relied on ‘moments’. All it seemed the plan was towards the end was give the ball to your best/most creative player and hope they do something. That happened with the likes of Ryan Kent, Abdallah Sima, Vaclav Cerny and is now happening with Djeidi Gassama.
There’s no tactical flexibility with this ‘style’ and the manager is just sitting watching it fail and hoping it gets better. This thought process and stubbornness is the literal definition of insanity but Southampton fans did warn Rangers fans that there was a chance this would happen.
I’m sure many didn’t think it would happen this early but here we are, how long can it continue?
Scottish Football Tips
Kai Watson provides weekly Scottish football tips throughout the season, and with the Old Firm coming up there is no better time to see what he has to say as Rangers look to bounce back.
