Fear and loathing at Ibrox: Russell Martin is down and out.

At the time of writing, it isn’t over yet.

But what does “over” mean in the context we’re talking about here? It means that, as of this moment, Russell Martin still has a job – but that job is becoming increasingly difficult, verging on impossible. Under the circumstances he finds himself in, it will be impossible for anyone to do.

I don’t think you could describe the way their fans feel about him as anything other than hateful. They hate him. Everyone knows it – everyone in Scottish football knows it. It’s not going to get any better. Some of them were actually pleased with last night’s result precisely because it kept the campaign to have him removed alive.

If he’d won that game, it would have been two victories in a row and maybe, just maybe, a few directors would have begun to waver.

The defeat leaves him in a dreadful position.

That’s why I say that, at the time of writing, he still has a job – because I don’t know what the situation will be when you, the reader, are actually reading this. “Dead man walking” doesn’t seem inappropriate. It doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. If you were going to call Martin something, you’d be justified in calling him that.

As I’ve said before, it’s not just that the fans are against him.

That’s bad enough – when that happens, a manager is usually in serious trouble. But normally there’s at least one dissenting media voice standing up for a beleaguered boss. The only person so far in Scottish football who seems interested in doing that is Brendan Rodgers – and he’s been criticised for it.

Unless things change, Rodgers remains the only one still suggesting Martin deserves a little more time.

The irony is that last night was actually not a terrible performance.

There were individual players who were dreadful, but as a whole the team played better than they have in weeks.

Diomonde’s red card turned a difficult task into a near-impossible one. Gent are not a great side – they don’t have a European pedigree – and the Ibrox club of a year or 18 months ago would have fancied themselves to beat them at home. This Ibrox team is a pale shadow of those that came before.

So it is possible to feel a flicker of sympathy for Martin in terms of the result and the self-destructive tendencies of some of his players.

But he is not a good manager, and there’s no sugar-coating that.

If he were six months into the job and producing these results, he’d already be gone. As Malcolm Tucker once put it, “Sacked after 12 months looks like you screwed up. Sacked after 12 weeks looks like they screwed up.” Perhaps, understandably, the Ibrox board does not want to look that stupid this early.

But it’s Mission Impossible. They know it. We know it. Everyone knows it.

If this was just the Ibrox fans in their usual relentless call for blood, you might see a possible route through. If the media was even partly on his side, you might see a path. But they’re not – and they never have been.

Some journalists were out to get him from the moment he arrived, their expectations of a bigger name dashed by harsh reality. They’ve never quite forgiven him or the club for making them look like fools.

And there are cultural issues too. He doesn’t fit the Ibrox culture. He doesn’t belong in it. That is a very unforgiving culture for those who don’t belong. Beyond that, he doesn’t even look like he cares that he doesn’t fit, and he has no intention of trying. He’s not going to play the usual games in the press – baiting Celtic, claiming victimisation from refs, indulging in the Follow Follow or “No Surrender” rubbish. He may have played there, but he is not the kind of “good soldier” they want and expect.

So, at the time of writing, he still has a job.

But there is no scenario in which he lasts much longer.

Those Celtic fans who are fervently hoping he makes it all the way to November and that League Cup semi-final aren’t going to get what they want. Our own team is going to have to improve dramatically to be ready for that game, because the gods aren’t going to smile on us and leave Russell Martin in the dugout.

He’ll be long gone before then.

It’s usually crazy to second-guess Scottish football, but on this one there’s very little doubt left. His Ibrox tenure is being measured in days rather than weeks or months. It’s not inconceivable that someone else will be in the dugout before they play Livingston. It’s certainly not inconceivable that he’ll be fired shortly after that game if they don’t win.

The League Cup victory over Hibs bought him a reprieve, but it was always temporary. He was only ever one bad result away from a whole lot of hurt.

Last night wasn’t a disaster on the scale of what Bruges did to them, but it was, in its own way, a humiliation – a chastening reminder of where they’re at. At the time of writing, they’re in a League Cup semi-final but sitting 11th in the league.

Granted, it’s only after five games, but 11th place after five games is a disaster for a club of that size. It’s not even scant consolation to them that Aberdeen are 12th.

Martin carries the can for that.

Let’s be honest – he’s been dealt a terrible hand. Some of the players who turned out for him last night shouldn’t be within a country mile of a side allegedly challenging for trophies. There’s just nothing there. You can’t see evidence that he can make this work – or even anything that gives confidence someone else could.

There is no Ibrox manager I’ve ever wished well, and there never will be.

But if it were possible to find some crumb of human sympathy for an Ibrox boss, it would be this one. He’s been dealt the worst hand I’ve ever seen one of their managers get. Although any one of his predecessors would have got better results with it, the poverty of that hand still matters.

And soon – very soon indeed – we’ll find out how someone else deals with it. Because if any managerial tenure ever looked over, it’s this one. He’s no longer stumbling on; he’s waiting to be put out of his misery.