It’s their mentality- desperate Russell Martin throws his players under the bus

Russell Martin put his side’s defeat to Sturm Graz down to the mentality of his players.

Since taking charge of the Ibrox Tribute Act the former Southampton boss has signed 14 players resulting in a net spend of £20m.

After 16 match under Martin only five victories have been achieved, in 10 of those matches the first goal has been conceded.

Following the wins over Hibs and Livingston Martin was keen to put the focus on his tactical plans, coming up with wins when the levels of personal hatred towards the club manager was at its most vocal.

Last night in Austria there were constant chants from the 1,200 supporters about how much they hate Martin.

After the defeat a listen to their managers post-match excuses is likely to turn up the poison as fans demand Martin’s sacking and the appointment of a staunch manager in tune with the traditions and values of the 13 year old club.

Soon after the final whistle Martin was smirking his way through an interview with TNT laced with his usual levels of arrogance, demonstrating how he is much smarter than the interviewer.

We have to improve the mentality quickly. This is not a technical, tactical problem.

The mentality in the second half was brilliant – to compete, to fight, to run. We didn’t do that in the first 20 minutes and we paid the price for it.

You can’t start that poorly. We still had loads of chances in the first half, but they had too many, all from set-play or throw-in.

We just have to be brighter, organised quicker and help each other more, so the mentality is the problem. We are not doing what we should do on the set-play, we are not doing what we should do on our throw-in.

That’s, like, a mentality issue. We caused them a lot of problems in the first half and were so dominant in the second half. Of course, we gave up a couple of chances late on because we were throwing everything at it, but we should score more goals.

You come away from a game in Europe and have that many chances, big chances, you cannot lose the game.

It is a mentality thing. We have to look at it. We have a lot of young men and they have to learn really quickly.

Those young men included a defence made up on Jack Butland (32), James Tavernier (33), John Souttar (29) and Derek Cornelius (27), Captain Disappointed will be 34 at the end of this month.

After two matches in the Europa League Martin’s side are pointless with their next match away to Norwegian champions SK Brann as the pressure piles up.

European football has been the salvation for previous Ibrox managers but that seems unlikely to be the case for Martin, even Barry Ferguson managed to get past Fenerbahce after winning 3-1 away in Turkey.

On Sunday Martin takes his side to Falkirk in the SPFL Premiership, looking for a win to take them into the top half of the table ahead of the international break.

CLICK HERE for UEFA match report from Graz.

CLICK HERE for Chris McKay laughing through Celtic’s defeat from Braga.