'Go now' - Kevin Muscat's Rangers stance evokes order given to Graeme Souness amid title pursuit

The sentence was one of those included in a brief statement from chairman Andrew Cavenagh and vice chairman Paraag Marathe at the start of last week as they reached out to supporters in the form of an open letter 24 hours after Martin’s undignified exit at Falkirk.

In a way, it was a textbook sacking. The start of the Autumn international window, a natural invitation for clubs to part ways with underperforming managers. Indeed, this time of year is often identified as the start of sacking season.

Of course, Rangers fans will complain that the intervention was still several weeks too late. The start of the previous international window, days after the 6-0 drubbing by Club Brugge, was the time to act. Maybe even before.

Either way, everything since has felt very un-textbook. One can argue about the suitability of the person coming in, but there were barely 24 hours between Nottingham Forest sacking Nuno Espirito Santo and installing Ange Postecoglou.

The pair all but passed one another in the City Ground car park. Of course, Santo’s future had been in doubt since the end of the following season after a very public contretemps with owner Evangelos Marinakis. Postecoglou had clearly already been sounded out. It’s not as if Martin suddenly reached the point of no return at Rangers. The fans staged a protest outside the Ibrox front door before the Premier Sports Cup clash with Hibs fully two weeks earlier. The situation was already untenable.

The Rangers board ought to have been already touching base with the likes of Steven Gerrard and Danny Rohl. Rounds of fruitless negotiations with them and others have created a far from satisfactory situation where the club seem set to announce a new manager who can’t – or prefers not to – clock on for several weeks. Former defender Kevin Muscat has a league title to win with Shanghai Port first. Rangers must know their place.

Prospect of six Rangers managers in eight months

Almost a fortnight after Martin’s exit and at a stage of the season where they can ill-afford many more slip ups, Rangers are preparing to resume league action with an interim manager in charge. It’s not even an interim appointment of the kind they opted for last season, in similar circumstances. In fact, Steven Smith would appear to be the interim to the interim, with Neil McCann, another former player, reported to be taking over the reins next week. McCann will then become the club’s fifth manager, temporary or otherwise, in eight months, with Muscat the sixth.

If the Australian takes over when expected, following the conclusion of the Chinese Super League season, it will be six managers in the space of 40 games.

Smith, it seems, is coming in as a 90-minute, one-match manager. He has this plea ringing in his ears: Just get us a win, pleeeaaase!

If he does, he’ll already have outdone Martin, who didn’t register a single league victory at Ibrox in his 123-day stay. Smith will enjoy a tremendous amount of goodwill. The Rangers fans’ beef is certainly not with a player who turned out over 100 times for the club in two different spells. It is with those above him, particularly sporting director Kevin Thelwell and chief executive Patrick Stewart and, increasingly it seems, with American owners who have been labelled, however unfairly, as a stars and stripes version of Mike Ashley.

Confirmation of Smith’s temporary role was posted by Rangers on Thursday afternoon. It contained scant detail other than the names of those who will assist the 40-year-old in the challenging assignment against a Dundee United side smelling blood. Smith will be joined on the sidelines by Brian Gilmour, the B team manager, Rhys Owen, head of performance, and goalkeeper coach Sal Bibbo, the surviving member of Martin’s backroom staff.

“Surprised Thelwell hasn’t appointed a couple of uncles,” was one of the wittier responses to Rangers’ announcement on X. This of course referenced the appointment – although there’s been no official confirmation that he is actually in the building yet – of Thelwell’s son, Robbie, as new head of recruitment.

One imagines Gerrard, now a grandfather of course, would not have been thrilled with learning a 26-year-old was performing such a key role and perhaps even having the last say on players. Muscat might not be too keen on this idea either.

It may not be advisable to tell the hard-tackling defender, who was once the subject of legal action following a challenge that ended the career of an opponent, what to do full stop. He appears to have got exactly what he wants from the unusual scenario where he has been poached by another club at such a crucial stage of the season.

Souness was told ‘go now’ when title was on line

Not even Graeme Souness managed this. It’s fascinating to consider Rangers having to sit and wait for Muscat to enjoy what he hopes will prove a winning finale in the Far East. Shanghai Port are top by two points with four games – at the time of writing – left.

The situation mirrors when Souness informed his then chairman David Murray that he had decided to accept Liverpool’s offer to succeed Kenny Dalglish in 1991. However, he also expressed his desire to stay and seal a third successive title at Rangers. There were just four games left.

“Let me think about this,” Murray replied after Souness told him of his plan. “Go now.” Writing in his recently published memoir Mettle, Murray explained that it felt like a “no-win situation” for him.

Souness left immediately, leaving Walter Smith to get Rangers over the line in the last-match shootout versus fellow title challengers Aberdeen and following a worrying 0-3 bump against Motherwell.

Although it is probably dismaying for Rangers fans to think a new manager could miss as many as eight matches while completing duties elsewhere, it’s a sign that Muscat calls the shots.

It’s a quality that might stand him in good stead in view of the dizzying number of people ostensibly operating above the new manager’s head in the current regime at Ibrox, which is perhaps one reason why Gerrard ran screaming for the desert.