We had a one off day
Martin: Killie defeat was just a bad result ... Gers are still on the up under Murty
THE result and performance was painfully familiar to Rangers fans but Russell Martin is convinced the Killie collapse was just a bad day and not a return to the bad old days.
The on-loan Norwich defender wasn’t around for the first half of the season so he didn’t get to experience the fall of Pedro Caixinha and the ruins Graeme Murty had to inherit.
Martin only sampled the sense of progress made after the January transfer window when the fleet of new arrivals helped boost Rangers to six wins on the spin.
That giddy spell seems a long way off now after a bruising week with defeats to Celtic and Kilmarnock brought a return to the Ibrox woe.
Rangers have now won just seven out of 16 at home this season and the tally of seven losses is the worst at Ibrox for 103 years.
Martin is clinging on to the hope the week from hell is only a bump in the road but admitted it’s going to take huge character in the squad to step up for the rest of the campaign. He said: “I can’t speak for the games I wasn’t here. I was only here for the Hibs defeat where we played really well in the second half and should have got a draw. “We just need to keep working, I’ve said it all along. Even though we’ve been on a great run, we’re not the finished article at all. “It’s a process and it takes a long time to get to where the manager wants us to be. Today’s a setback but we have to make sure we put it right and keep working on the same things. “They will pay off and we will get more wins than we do defeats. “We will have better days than we have today – like we have recently. This was just a bad day and we have to move on and make sure we show some character to bounce back.”
Martin knows Rangers fans don’t want empty promises. They’ve heard plenty in recent years. They want performances otherwise the pressure will be on.
The 31-year-old said: “It’s the way at a big club like this and you have to be able to cope with that. What I would say is that we were on a brilliant run to put ourselves in a good position and we have to make sure that happens again.
“Aberdeen have a game in hand but let them do what they do and we’ve got to concentrate on us. It’s going to be a big run-in with some important games and we have to cope with it.”
Rangers could have played until midnight without scoring against Killie – in contrast to the recent run where the goals were flying in left, right and centre.
Murty pointed to a lack of conviction in his side with fragile confidence draining far too quickly.
But Martin said: “I don’t know if it was a lack of belief but it was a lack of patience and frustration towards the end.
“Sometimes you just need something to
MICHAEL GANNON
galvanise you in those games to get you going and get the crowd going but nothing triggered us to do that, nothing at all, and that’s the frustrating thing.
“Probably what the manager is referring to is we didn’t look like scoring, whereas in the past few weeks we’ve had chance after chance.
“You have to give some credit to Killie for the way they’ve defended and worked, and they have the threat on the counter. But we haven’t been good enough and we’re disappointed by that.”
Martin came closer than anyone to notching against Kilmarnock with a couple of headers, including one that hit the woodwork in the second half. The defender was kicking himself at the misses but also the all-round performance.
He said: “I’ve had the two best chances of the day, one in the first half when Kris Boyd just got a touch on it before I headed it, but one of them has got to go in.
“It’s disappointing. I thought the second one was in but it hit the bar and the post. It was one of those games when we weren’t quite at it and it might just have taken one of them, a set-piece to get a goal, because we hadn’t really created much compared to recent weeks. It was the first time in a long time we haven’t hit the levels we have recently and that’s the frustrating thing.”
It has been a familiar feeling for Martin this last fortnight after he was devastated that back problems forced him to miss out on an Old Firm debut.
He said: “I was absolutely gutted. I trained on the Thursday and Friday but if I felt that I couldn’t perform then I wouldn’t have played.
“My back is not 100 percent so I will have to try to sort that out this week. I was seriously gutted to miss out last week. I tried but it wasn’t right and to miss out on a game of that magnitude is difficult.
“Then David Bates got injured and that continuity we’ve had gets broken up, and it’s new partnerships in the last couple of weeks going back to the Falkirk game in the cup. Perhaps we haven’t found our rhythm again but we need to.
“We spoke about the importance of getting a reaction after the Celtic game and starting with a high tempo, making sure we got off to a good start to give the crowd a reason to get behind us. But we never did it.
“We’ve got two weeks now to put that right, because other teams are going to come here and do the same.”