Martin is in “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” territory.<\/p>\n
Of the many narratives that have had the Rangers boss as the main protagonist since he walked in the front door at Ibrox in the summer, a key plot twist has been the perceived issue around Nico Raskin. <\/p>\n
The Belgium midfielder was dropped before the international break and, after scoring for his country, was still absent for the 2-0 defeat by Heart of Midlothian last week. Arguably Rangers’ best player last season, in times of crisis, fans were left sitting in the stand with him. <\/p>\n
On Saturday, he returned and shone. The 24-year-old glanced in the opener while also tormenting a Hibs defence as he wriggled free time and time again. It is the sort of savvy play a rudderless Rangers have been yearning for in a winless domestic start.<\/p>\n
“I think I gave him a role today that really suits him and freed him up a little bit and I think he was fantastic,” Martin, who was then asked if he regretted not playing him against Celtic and Hearts, said.<\/p>\n
“You have to make a decision as a coach that you think is best for the team at the time.<\/p>\n
“Circumstances and situations very often happen within clubs that can’t come out.<\/p>\n
“It might be a necessary part of Nico’s growth, or our growth as a team, and today was part of a team that was so together, so committed and so brave to take the ball and I thought he was outstanding.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin is in “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” territory. Of the many narratives that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-150015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}