Inside the goldfish bowl it can look like Martin is doomed. Every Rangers fan is screaming blue murder. They’re calling for him to be sacked, in terms that offer no ambiguity.
There is a venom and a toxicity. How can he hope to survive this and this and this?
The reality is that even though there are no discernible improvements in Rangers under Martin – not even scraps – he will get more opportunity to rebuild the team.
Cavenagh and Marathe don’t strike you as having itchy trigger fingers. Not yet at any rate.
They cannot be deaf to the howls of protest – if they attend the Old Firm game on Sunday they’ll be told all about it – but there’s little evidence to suggest they will be influenced by supporters who are ready to spontaneously combust.
So you have a board who will wait, a support who see no point in waiting, and a manager who is attempting to sound like he’s got this under control when all evidence screams otherwise. A heady brew.
This is Martin’s team and Martin’s mess. Not only is it not working, it’s getting worse. No amount of fast-talking can disguise that, no attempt at a three-card trick is going to fool a single fan at this point.
Nasser Djiga was among the culpable for the first Brugge goal – a Martin signing. Max Aarons got himself sent off inside eight minutes – another Martin signing.
Every one of his new recruits were dismantled. At the break, he took off three of them – 5-0 to Brugge at that stage – and replaced them with three players he inherited.
Later, as he picked through the rubble, he found some praise for one of his substitutes, captain James Tavernier. He said he was proud of the leadership the veteran full-back showed – and it was weird.
If Tavernier is so good, why did he not start him ahead of the hapless Aarons? If he was made of the right stuff, then how come Martin benched him against St Mirren last Sunday, against Brugge last Tuesday, against Alloa before that and against Dundee before that?
There are many illustrations of how curious Martin’s decision-making is right now, and the sudden praise for a captain he has dropped is part of it.
Rangers, under Martin, cannot defend and in Bruges they couldn’t stem the flow of blood when Aarons threw his team under the bus.
They turn to jelly when the ball is delivered into their box, not just on Wednesday, but against Motherwell and Dundee and St Mirren and Alloa.
This is not just about Brugge. Not solely. It’s about a manager who a chunk of the supporters never wanted in the first place failing to turn them around, like the tanker of his imagination.
It’s about confusion and chaos, about unconvincing words and alarming performances. It’s about a board who, apparently, believe and supporters who quite obviously don’t.
And next stop is the Old Firm game at Ibrox, which both clubs pant and wheeze towards. These battles are rarely pretty. This could be one of the grislier ones.
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