Russell Martin’s Taking A Big Championship Risk With Rangers | OneFootball

There is no question that Rangers are taking something of a risk, not just with Russell Martin, but with EFL signings for Rangers, the calibre of players that the club is attempting to sign. So far this window, the vast majority have come from the lower EFL, that is to say, the Championship and League One.

This is not, strictly speaking, the market Rangers should be in. While we had no time whatsoever for Nils Koppen, nevertheless one thing the former Technical Director, or whatever he was, said was that Rangers were not going to be looking, going forward, into the Championship or League One as a transfer market.

That instead, Rangers would seek out Premier League and European level players, aka players of a high enough calibre. Now, in all fairness, he said this after January that he joined, and possibly after the summer during which we brought in the likes of Bajcetic, who in theory could have been a half-decent player as well.

That did, to be fair, fall under his general guidance and what he was saying. Nevertheless, today we see that very much reversed. We’ve gone not only for Championship level players, EFL signings for Rangers but we’ve brought in a Championship level manager too. Not Championship manager, of course, but Championship level manager.

Russell Martin did not thrive in the Premier League. He was out of his depth and hadn’t signed the right quality, or targeted the right players, or set his team up right in order to cope with that level. And he was rightly sacked.

Now, of course, when you look at Rangers’ managers in equivalent to Premier League performance, Walter Smith himself did not do that great either. But his circumstances were very different. He kept his side up.

Yes, Everton were kept up, despite being an absolute shambles of a club at the time. They were a complete mess. They had not a single penny to spend. Southampton did have money to spend, they just didn’t spend it particularly well. And Martin’s tactics didn’t work at that level.

That said, the point of this piece is about the players and the market that Rangers are going for. It is the market that Martin is similar to, that he is familiar with. It is a Championship and it is League One.

And that is the target of player level that Rangers have gone with. We, of course, cannot endorse this. We need Premier League, the very best in the Scottish Premiership, and decent European calibre.

Of course, all players come with a risk, but you can hedge your bets and reduce that risk by going for as many players of a higher level as you possibly can. Some of them will not work out, that’s life, we know that.

But going for players who are all to be hidden gems? It does seem like a very, very big gamble. Obviously, we hope that we are wrong, that our doubts are misplaced. That Martin is targeting the players who he is going to cultivate and get into the right place for what Rangers need to win the League.

Because, let’s face it, we need to win the League. But we certainly, at the very least, need to be very, very close to Celtic. Far closer than we have been recently.

Can we do that with Max Aarons? Can we do that with Thelo Aasgaard? Well, a lot of fans are backing these players, are giving the chance FFS, as they like to do. Let’s hope they are right to do that.

At the end of the day, these are the players we have ended up with. We don’t think very many of them are good enough. We do like Nasser Djiga. And one or two others may be okay. But overall, it’s bulk of the Championship and League One.

That is the level that we are going to. Unfortunately, it seems to be the target market, as we have said before. But curiously, we have the money to buy better.

We have already spent 5 million, according to 4Lads, on Thelo Aasgaard. Their words, not ours. We have spent 3.5 on Emmanuel Fernandes. That again is a fair old chunk of cash for a lower level player.

This is money that could be better spent with modest Premier League level players. Decent European players. We could put this on Bosmans for out of contract players. But no, we have gone for young talents from lower leagues.

Hoping, we suppose, to find a bunch of Matt O’Rileys. That is not likely to happen. And Martin is hedging his bets. And he is taking a gamble.

We can only hope it’s a gamble that completely pays off. And the doubters, including us, look so stupid at the end of all this.