Martin has to get over himself and understand the way the justice system works within Scottish football<\/p>\n
Veteran sportswriter and broadcaster with a distinctive style. A boxing expert as well as a football writer and columnist for the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, Hugh also presents Clyde 1 FM\u2019s Superscoreboard show.<\/p>\n
![\"Rangers'](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_JS380871959-1.jpg\")
Rangers’ Lyall Cameron (left) and Nicolas Raskin (right) sitting in the stands <\/p>\n
Russell Martin has succeeded in taking the Rangers<\/a> supporters to two places at one time.<\/p>\n In the first instance, he has taken them to the end of their tether, where they are finished with him, his arrogance and the job he is doing at Ibrox.<\/p>\n Secondly, Martin<\/a>, having left the fans bereft of all hope after yesterday\u2019s defeat from Hearts<\/a> and disgusted by the ongoing rejection of Nico Raskin, has removed the fan base to the last resort.<\/p>\n That being the hope Celtic offer some hope of yet salvaging something from the season by becoming trapped by implosion while Rangers deal with the after effects of explosion.<\/p>\n The last 12 minutes of the game at Rugby Park today will be of infinitely more interest than the first 12 if you are a Rangers fan.<\/p>\n If the stand occupied by the Celtic support for the game against Kilmarnock is belatedly as empty as it will be when the match kicks off, it will mean there has been a show of disgust, as opposed to a demonstration of solidarity, among the away fans.<\/p>\n A visible indication that the team put together under reduced circumstances, diminished responsibility and UEFA-enforced constrictions \u2013 or whatever excuse it is the Celtic board are peddling this weekend \u2013 has flopped on the field of play.<\/p>\n And solidified the theory that Celtic\u2019s season is on an irreversible slide towards implosion at the same time.<\/p>\n The Scottish Government will this week attempt to do away with the legal anomaly known as the Not Proven verdict. But they\u2019ve been beaten to it by the various Celtic supporter groups.<\/p>\n They have formed a jury and already dispensed with Not Proven in favour of passing a guilty verdict on thoseresponsible for the ownership, and running of, their club. A unanimous decision.<\/p>\n Rangers supporters are, at the same time, now under a two-year-long suspended sentence from UEFA for apyrotechnic display during a damp squib of a performance in the calamitous 6-0 defeat to Club Brugge in the Champions League play-off tie in Belgium.<\/p>\n Quite what they had to light flares about in Belgium while on the way to a 9-1 aggregate defeat is a source of mystery but, like the head coach, they know a judgment is pending.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why Martin has to get over himself and understand the way the justice system works within Scottish football.<\/p>\n Martin is a man on trial and he has to remember that anything he says may be used as evidence against him at a later date.<\/p>\n Such as his statement that Nico Raskin remains an outcast from the first team because he has a \u201cduty to win the trust of his team-mates\u201d.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t Southampton with yachts in a marina.<\/p>\n This is Glasgow where they\u2019ll use shipyard rivets to pin you to a wall if your way of running the team is found to be unsatisfactory. Best not to tell those sitting in judgment of you, for example, that you didn\u2019t hear them chanting Raskin\u2019s name yesterday and during the last Old Firm game.<\/p>\n The match was too awful to be the source of ear-splitting crowd noise.<\/p>\n Only the hard of hearing could have failed to pick up the crowd taking the side of a player over the man who had left him out of the team.<\/p>\n Raskin is, at a time of uncertainty, a player they can rely on because he exudes all the attributes they are looking for \u2013 combativeness mixed with the arrogant swagger of a supremely confident performer being chief among his qualities.<\/p>\n If he also happens to be a monumental pain in the backside then all that can be said is he isn\u2019t the first, and he certainly won\u2019t be the last, to fall into that category.<\/p>\n In this game, pragmatism wins the day over favouritism every time. You don\u2019t need to like them to pick them, so long as they are doing the business out on the park.<\/p>\n Raskin has, apparently, had the flaws in his character acknowledged by the leadership group at Ibrox.<\/p>\n The trouble with being my age is that you hear things today and your response is to remember what was being said back in the day.<\/p>\n I\u2019m trying to imagine what Jock Wallace would have said if you\u2019d told him there was a leadership group in the Ibrox dressing-room.<\/p>\n Probably nothing at all.<\/p>\n But there would have been structural damage before the group was disbanded on the orders of someone who was a soldier involved in jungle warfare overseas before he got involved in football.<\/p>\n![\"Rangers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0_JS380896004.jpg\")
Rangers boss Russell Martin has not won a league game <\/p>\n