Rangers? Negativity? ‘What Negativity’ We Hear You Cry | OneFootball

Ibrox Noise is well aware of just how negative our content has often come across in the past few months.

We have never felt this low regarding a managerial appointment at Ibrox and were dead against Russell Martin being brought in. We also had massive caution about the new owners and that was vindicated to an extent when AGMs were cancelled and fellow shareholders, ourselves included, were given no voting rights anymore.

Nevertheless, these all add up to a bit of a disenfranchised support as well, with the division that we are seeing currently between fans who will back absolutely anything, which we of course do not deny them the right to do, and those who are a lot more cautious and question things a lot more.

But either way, we are aware of just how negative we have sounded. We offered a poll recently regarding a question to our readers of how negative we were. Was the content honesty or negativity? The majority said it was somewhere in the middle, which we appreciate and respect.

But the fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever that Russell Martin is the right appointment, that any of these players are the right signings, that any of the existing squad are the right level.

Nothing about the current regime screams of Rangers. As one fan put it, the whole thing feels off, the whole thing feels wrong, the whole thing feels very un-Rangers.

There is no question that it does, and the only case that those who truly back and believe Martin is the right man, that they have to make, the only case that they can offer, is ‘give him a chance’.

They then point to, quote unquote, success with Southampton, when yes, he managed to win the play-off final, but the fact that he did not win the Championship league itself, in itself, rings massive alarm bells.

Furthermore, his promotion to the Premier League was well out of his depth, and he only won two games of 19 or 17. Either way, he was gone after half a season, because he was not good enough for that level.

And the Premier League is Rangers level. We are not saying Rangers are as good as Premier League sides, but we are saying that the demand is similar. The pressure in the Premier League is huge, the demand and the quality. Rangers is similar. We are must-win.

Sure, Everton or Wolves are not must-win, but the quality of their players and the quality they play against raises the overall level to an extremely high pressure point. And Martin could not cope with that, nowhere near.

So yes, we know we have been negative, but we are not seeing evidence, other than blind faith, to support a case to the contrary.

If we start seeing Premier League level players flying in at the front door, if we see big money being spent (we have seen allegedly £14.5M but not terribly well) and we see a Rangers level manager coming in, yes, we will offer so much positivity, we will feel like it is a Rangers that we can relate to.

But at the moment, it is not. It is a Championship level manager, with League One level players and fans who for the majority are just blind-faithing their way into hoping that this is the answer.

We hope it is. We hope we are wrong. And we do, in a sense, apologise for being so grumpy.

But unless we have something to be un-grumpy with, that is going to continue. And drawing to Barnsley does not help Martin’s case much at all.