Russell Martin has won three league games since 2024, why is anyone still hiring him? | OneFootball

How does Russell Martin keep getting jobs?

His latest failure is happening right now at Leicester City, where he has guided the pre-season bookies’ favourites to 17th, just one spot below Mansfield Town.

At the weekend they were smashed 4-0 at home to Oxford United, a week after Martin had told the fans who had travelled to Milton Keynes to watch a 0-0 to calm down.

Leicester are sleepwalking to a third consecutive relegation and according to our friends at TEAMtalk, the Leicester board – who are not exactly known for smart decisions – are already considering his future.

To highlight just how poor his managerial career has been of late, Martin has won three league games since the start of the 2024/25 season – one each at THREE different clubs. Which takes us back to the original question: how does Russell Martin keep getting jobs?

The entire basis of his managerial reputation is built upon the 2023/24 season when he secured promotion to the Premier League with Southampton. Fair play to him, that is an achievement worth celebrating, but if you look at the context, it is a little less impressive.

Southampton were not one of the three best teams that season. Winners Leicester were 10 points ahead, second-place Ipswich were nine ahead. It was only due to a catastrophic collapse by Leeds that they only finished three points ahead of Martin’s Saints.

Leeds’ loss of momentum meant winning the play-offs was never going to happen and so Southampton picked off West Brom and then Leeds to go up.

But Southampton conceded six more goals than Ipswich and they conceded 22 more than Leicester. Martin would tell us to look at the goals scored but Ipswich and Leicester both scored more.

Martin is a self-confessed tiki-taka disciple. When he joined Southampton, he said his style was to “dominate the ball”. In the past he has said he likes the football of Barcelona, Manchester City and Spain but Russell fella, look at their squads compared to yours.

You do not have to have a UEFA pro licence to realise that the free-flowing football you played with a relegated side in the Championship would not work in the Premier League.

The result was predictable; Southampton got battered. They let in 36 goals in 16 matches and managed a solitary win against Everton before Russell was given the sack.

Why then did Rangers feel that this was the man to take them forward? Perhaps the Ibrox board had looked at Vincent Kompany, who was relegated with Burnley and then succeeded at Bayern, and thought Martin could do the same, but Martin is a far more one-dimensional manager than Kompany. It’s Martin’s way or the highway.

Martin only lasted seven games, drawing five of them and winning only one with a team that should be beating 10 out of the 12 teams in that division. Celtic’s appointment of Wilfried Nancy is the best thing that could have ever happened to Martin’s reputation.

Maybe it’s the way he talks or the ‘casual Fridays’ outfits he wears on the touchline but Martin has a reputation far greater than one he has ever actually earned.

Martin will be sacked or Leicester will go down; the question is whether anyone else is foolish enough to appoint him.