{"id":170661,"date":"2025-09-26T15:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T15:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/170661\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T15:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T15:41:07","slug":"scottish-premiership-russell-martins-rangers-kelechi-iheanacho-jimmy-thelin-in-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/170661\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Premiership: Russell Martin&#8217;s Rangers, Kelechi Iheanacho &#038; Jimmy Thelin in spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In normal times, this shouldn&#8217;t be the game of the weekend &#8211; but these are far from normal times at Rangers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">And a game on a plastic pitch, against a physical team with a wily manager, is the last thing Russell Martin and his players need.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They suffered a fourth defeat in 14 games in Thursday&#8217;s Europa League loss to Genk and now the Ibrox side &#8211; sitting second from bottom in the Premiership &#8211; attempt to pick up a first league win of the season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Four draws and a defeat has Martin&#8217;s side one point behind their West Lothian hosts &#8211; albeit having played a game fewer &#8211; in their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/articles\/c04qdneqgl9o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">worst league start in 48 years.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rangers are winless in six league games &#8211; stretching back into last season &#8211; (D5 L1), the joint-longest run in their entire history (level with six other runs of six, most recently in December 2005).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It&#8217;s not a case of being unlucky, either. The performances have been pitiful and even Martin seems to be losing a little faith in his own &#8216;fortunes will flip&#8217; mantra.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It may only be match-day six for Rangers, but this falls in the &#8216;must-win&#8217; category.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They have won nine of their past 10 games at Livingston in all competitions (D1), including their latest six in a row. In fact, they have not lost in their last 21 meetings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As ever with a fixture of this kind, though, David Martindale&#8217;s side have nothing to lose.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They were left <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/live\/cq5j48e2x58t\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reeling from a video assistant referee (VAR) decision<\/a> in the dying embers of their defeat by Dundee last week, although a second win on their return to the top flight would swiftly bring back the smiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In normal times, this shouldn&#8217;t be the game of the weekend &#8211; but these are far from normal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-170661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}