Fear and loathing in the Champions League. Martin’s latest comments blow up in his face.

It feels like one of those moments they should replay over and over again, except in slow motion so we get that weird echoing effect – Russell Martin sitting at the press conference the other day, talking about how he was unbeaten in his first five games. Oh, these things have a way of coming back to haunt you, don’t they?

His record now stands at “qualified for the Champions League final hurdle” – but only just. They scraped over the line tonight in a manner which suggests that a really good side will give them a beating of such epochal severity that their ancestors will feel it, and all their descendants will be born with bad backs as a result.

How’s that record looking now, Russell my man?

Two wins in the first six. One defeat. Three draws.

I read some hopeful clutching-at-straws comparisons at the weekend between the start Ange made and the start this guy has made. The problem is, the comparison doesn’t survive even the briefest scrutiny.

Our home form under Ange in that early spell was so blistering that fans were drooling over the football and couldn’t wait for our away form to catch up – which it soon did. Six games in, what exactly are people seeing here that reminds them of Ange?

Martin’s is a side that gets worse the more you watch it.

Motherwell dominated them completely at Fir Park in the second half of a game where they were expecting to run away with it. They were lucky Motherwell’s finishing was so abysmal or they’d have taken a hiding that day.

They should have taken a hiding in Greece. They should have been a couple of goals down at Ibrox in the first leg of that tie.

Watching them tonight, a side with more firepower would have turned out their lights and overturned that three-goal lead.

Not that a proper team would ever have been in that position in the first place – from less possession than the Ibrox side had, their opponents managed over 25 shots and 10 on target. On another night, that’s a cricket score.

God alone knows how the Ibrox club will cope with a side of real quality. They’ll get turned over – absolutely turned over – and spanked, based on tonight’s performance and on everything we’ve seen from them in the six games of this guy’s tenure.

Their fans were furious that he sat in front of them and gave them that “unbeaten in five” line. You always had the feeling that kind of arrogance, that kind of bravado, would come back to haunt him. It has – though not as badly as it might have.

The three-goal lead insulated him from the worst impacts of the result, but the performance? If you’re an Ibrox fan, that must have been terrifying… especially when you know the bigger challenges lie ahead.

Even the decision to uncancel the St Mirren game calls into question his judgement, his attitude, and his bottle. They now have to go and play a tough league match when they’re arguably not ready, under the kind of pressure that usually folds an Ibrox team.

In many ways, although cancelling it was a mistake in the first place, they might have been better off leaving it alone – because right now, no one would bet against St Mirren taking points off them based on that display. No one would bet against them being even further behind Celtic by the time we roll into Ibrox.

The saving grace for them might be that our own board doesn’t seem to want to properly equip our manager for that game or the others ahead.

Their worst nightmare is if our directors have a sudden outbreak of ambition – or even just common sense. If we properly equip this team for that match, we’ll steamroller them. That game is now potentially as risky for our directors as it is for their manager; if we go in under-manned and don’t get a result, people will rightly blame them for it, because that team is there for the taking.

I always end these articles talking about fear and loathing – it’s the title, it’s the theme – and if you’re an Ibrox fan who was scared before now, guess what?

You’re not wrong to be even more scared tonight. I’d be petrified if that was my team I’d just watched.

There’s a lot of money sunk into that side, and they’re running up chits that club can’t pay. Yes, they’re on a £5 million bonus just for making it this far and, doubtless, the manager wants it to spend – and doubtless, he’ll get it to spend, because that’s the difference between their board and ours.

They’ll throw every penny and then some back out onto the pitch, and we won’t.

But it’s ill-advised to give him another penny, because you can see a mile away he’s not going to be there long.

They’ll have to account for every bit of that spending, and wonder how to recoup it if the next manager looks at that squad and doesn’t fancy it. How many times can one team rinse and repeat like this before the whole thing collapses in on itself?

They have a lot to be fearful of. The season ahead is going to be a long, drawn-out, awful experience for them – that much is clear.

Every game I’ve seen them in so far – and I’ve had the dubious pleasure of sitting through all six – has been worse than the one before. They were minutes away from losing at home to Dundee at the weekend, so anyone who thinks there’s improvement, or that comparisons to Ange’s start stand up to scrutiny, is kidding themselves.

I haven’t even looked at their forums.

I know there will be fear.

I’ve no doubt there will be loathing, and it won’t just be directed at the manager – because a lot of those players are simply not up to it.

That’s another major problem, considering what some of them cost. Danilo, for one, has to be one of the funniest pieces of transfer business in recent football history. Feyenoord must still be laughing over that contract. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

That club is in an awful lot of trouble and so is Martin. He very well could be the guy who drags down the average lifespan of an Ibrox boss by six months.

The Banter Years go on, without any end in sight.