There’s no end of flak that can be flung at Russell Martin for the epic fail that is his project at Rangers.
But watching his reaction when Mohamed Diomande got a deserved red card four minutes before half-time at Ibrox made you feel for the man.
Rangers had been second best. Fitful at the back, wasteful in possession, headless chickens in too many areas. Again.
Even before the red, it looked likely that Martin’s period of calm after Saturday’s League Cup win over Hibernian was about to come to a shuddering and noisy end.
In losing the plot, Diomande more or less ensured that Rangers were losing this Europa League opener against Genk, currently Belgium’s 14th best team.
In lunging in on Zakaria El Ouahdi, Diomande left his team-mates in a terrible lurch, already struggling with 11 and now sitting ducks with 10.
The lack of self-control was unforgivable, the look of confused innocence on his face in the aftermath a complete nonsense.
Diomande, who on his very best days looks like a player worthy of the jersey, has been nowhere near it this season. Too often he’s been lazy in his work and now he was ridiculous in his discipline.
‘Rangers engulfed in deepening apathy’
And so Martin was left, once again, to reap the whirlwind of those Rangers supporters who remained until the end.
Around 12,000 tickets went unsold – a reflection of a deepening apathy. The boos, now as much a part of the match-day experience as Broxi Bear, were heard again.
The chants demanding the manager’s head were cranked up for the umpteenth time. It was grim. The cameras panned to the directors’ box, where chairman Andrew Cavenagh and chief executive Patrick Stewart stood stony-faced.
A penny for Cavenagh’s thoughts. The Rangers fans would cough up a lot more than that for an audience with the man, for a chance to air their views by way of a venting of the spleen.
Cavenagh has made it known that he’s behind his manager, but it’s just not credible to think that he has no doubts about what he’s seeing. And it’s unimaginable that he has no concerns about the way his – and other people’s – money has been spent.
Is any single part of Rangers’ operation working? Not really. Quality of play, results, recruitment, relationship with supporters – nothing is functioning.
Rangers were, and are, a hard, hard watch. They were, and are, pedestrian and predictable. Laborious. Tiresome. Everything looked so slow, so difficult, so unthreatening, save for the odd moment of energy from Djeidi Gassama on the left.
Genk missed a sitter at 0-0, then hit a post, then missed a penalty, or rather had it saved by Jack Butland. All of those moments happened before the break when the score was level.
Diomande’s act of foolishness just put the tin hat on it. It gave Martin an excuse, and in his news conference later he took it.
But there was not a lot of positivity in Rangers’ performance before that and there was no reason to believe that it would have been any better had Diomande not taken himself out of the game.
Genk are in the midst of a poor run themselves, with one win in five coming into this. This was their first clean sheet in 11 games, which is the kind of thing that happens when your goalkeeper doesn’t have a save to make.
Like Rangers, they were under pressure. Like Rangers, they had cause to be anxious and negative, playing it tight and hoping for the best.
But they weren’t. They were ambitious on the ball. They attacked the game, while Rangers flailed wildly. Their intensity, away from home, was impressive.
Whatever their coach Thorsten Fink said to them beforehand, they looked full of belief, a stark contrast to their hosts.
‘Diomande just latest to let Martin down’
The lack of incisiveness in Martin’s team is remarkable for a set of players put together for a relative king’s ransom.
We’re told that Rangers’ net spend this summer has been £21m, including transfer fees and loan payments. You could put a dot between the 2 and the 1 and still wonder if they’ve got value.
They had Youssef Chermiti up front, a 21-year-old brought in from Everton at a cost of £8m.
It’s easy to bash the young striker, but he didn’t lack hunger or work-rate. What he lacked was a modicum of a chance, a sniff at goal. Just one.
The life of a Rangers centre-forward is a lonely existence right now. Isolated and joyless. They’re on their own up there. Sink or sink would appear to be the range of their options.
Diomande’s moment of madness was the last thing Martin needed, but it was Martin who picked him and it was Martin who picked others who struggled to make passes.
It was Martin, again, whose management of this team produced very little threat while giving up big chances even when it was 11 versus 11.
His midfielder let him down on Thursday, and on other days and nights it was others who let him down, didn’t show enough leadership, failed to make a difference.
The cast of characters on that front is long and thunderously unimpressive.
Martin gets filleted but the Rangers players can’t escape censure here. A lot of this mess is down to the manager, but not all of it.
He said the red changed the game and he was correct, but there’s always something – players being anxious, a red card, a penalty not given, another decision given in error. There’s a fatalism about all of this.
And on Sunday they have a trip to Livingston. Plastic pitch, canny manager, physical team motivated to the high heavens. A gauntlet awaits this meek Rangers outfit.
