Russell Martin another Guardiola disciple undone by tactical dogma

Opting not to wear the traditional matchday suit and tie because he sweats too much. Making his players freeze in Loch Lomond, because the issue has to be team bonding, not his tactics. Asking the photographers why he looked so miserable in every picture they took. Saying: “The only other thing I find sad is when I see kids standing next to their dads, sticking their fingers up and swearing at me,” having sought gainful employment at a Glasgow football club.

Yet perhaps the most interesting part of the entire snafu is how Martin keeps getting employed at all, keeps failing upwards. In four full seasons in management, his sides have conceded the 11th, fifth and joint-sixth most goals in the Championship (at Southampton and Swansea), and the 10th-most in League One (at MK Dons). Rangers duly conceded 104 shots in his first five games. Southampton had the second-worst defence in the Premier League but the poorest goal ­difference in the 16 games before his sacking.

To that point, across five years in continuous employment, he had overseen half a season of good results, a borderline miraculous run to finish fourth with a side third-favourites for promotion when he was appointed, propped up by parachute payments. Only once has one of his teams finished above 10th in their respective league. At Rangers, he won 29% of his 17 matches, with the previous lowest for a permanent manager at the club 52%. But his Southampton side did break the Championship record for most first-half passes (477) in his first match, and his MK Dons set a then-British record of scoring after a 56-pass move.

What Martin’s collapse really reveals is how much of managerial hiring remains guesswork. If any other industry was hiring and firing people at this rate, it might inspire slightly more introversion and investigation. But we still have such little understanding of how much managers actually impact a team, or why they succeed or fail, that this sort of review is basically impossible.

Martin nestles in the confluence of two current managerial trends – the primacy of narrative-driving spin kings, charming and sincere figures whose teams’ flaws are everyone else’s fault but their own, and tactical dogmatists who have stuck to their beliefs for so long that even if they once had a point, the football world has since moved on without them.

Alongside Martin, Ange Postecoglou and Ruben Amorim are the obvious examples. Their fore­father is Roberto Martínez, related is Graham Potter, who realised he was behind the times but has not been able to adapt, tinkering himself to death at West Ham.

And it increasingly appears this group are falling through the cracks of a generational tactical shift, football’s equivalent of Remainers still calling for another referendum, selling tickets for a ship that’s long sailed. They are disciples of varying tenets of a Guardiolan orthodoxy even the man himself has declared dead, united by an inability to adapt and a refusal to admit that they might be wrong, coupled with a talent for selling themselves and their ideas.

Collectively, Martin, Postecoglou, Amorim and Potter have lost 87 of their past 175 Premier League matches (49.7%) and made around £35m in post-sacking payouts. The more they lose, the more convinced they appear to be that their methods are not only tactically but morally just and correct, the deeper they ­disappear into sanctuaries of their own ­supposed genius.

Rangers were going to hire Davide Ancelotti until Martin’s seventh interview convinced them otherwise. CEO Patrick Stewart (not that one) welcomed a “culture architect” who had never built a lasting culture at any club, because he prioritises the most boring and misunderstood tenet of Pep Guardiola’s football and because he is an ­excellent self-promoter.

Postecoglou has reached the “fans filming hastily-written rap songs about your incompetence in their car” stage in record time. Since he replaced Nuno Espírito Santo, Forest have registered their highest-ever possession share in a Premier League match since promotion (64%) and have made their most passes in a game in the division during the same period. They have also scored just once in the league and not won a game under the Australian, losing to Swansea, Midtjylland and Sunderland.

Earlier this week, Kemi Badenoch was asked whether she was the Ruben Amorim of politics, with both shepherding dying powers into oblivion with belligerent incompetence and an unquestioning adherence to disproven ideals. Most of their issues stem not from being dogmatic but from doing dogma wrong, selling their souls for a faulty dream.

With Martin and Potter gone, and Amorim and Postecoglou almost inevitably going, this feels like the death rattle for the post-Guardiolan lost boys, raging against the dying of their tactical cycle. Asked to adapt or die, they have chosen the latter.

Photograph by Andrew Milligan/PA Wire