If Ibrox is sounding out candidates they should run a mile.

I’ve seen a lot in Scottish football over the years.

Some of it has been our business, some of it hasn’t. What goes on at Ibrox generally isn’t our business, and most of the time I’d rather not comment on it at all unless I’m having a laugh at their expense.

But I said this on the podcast the other night and I’ll repeat it here: the treatment Russell Martin has received since taking that job is absolutely deplorable. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years covering the game.

The media has an enormous amount to answer for here.

They spent the entire summer months feeding the Ibrox support a diet of pure fantasy. They told them they could expect a Mourinho or some other A-list managerial name to sweep in. At one stage, the hype machine pushed Carlo Ancelotti’s son as a serious candidate – on the basis that if your father’s a guru you must be one too.

Alongside that came the usual guff about Real Madrid academy kids rocking up in Govan as if that were the most natural thing in the world. It was nonsense from the start, but the press spun it, and the fans swallowed it whole.

This is what the media over there does: it sells the dream, no matter how unrealistic. And when the dream collapses, as it inevitably does, the anger is redirected at whoever happens to be in the dugout.

Russell Martin was set up from the moment his name was announced.

The drumbeat started instantly – “poor appointment, doomed to fail, not big enough for the job.” The coverage wasn’t sceptical, it was hostile. He had two powerful groups arrayed against him before a ball was even kicked: sections of the Ibrox support who thought the club deserved better, and ex-players in the media, including some who fancied the gig themselves, who were only too keen to undermine him.

The way he’s been treated has gone well beyond what I expected. The sheer scale of the hostility is staggering. The fact that he’s clinging to his position by his fingernails this early into his tenure is disgraceful. And the thing is, it’s been relentless – there’s been no let-up, no attempt to let him settle, no breathing space.

It’s been wall-to-wall negativity since his very first games. Even Ange Postecoglou, who was dismissed as a nobody from Japan before he took charge, never faced this level of unrelenting hostility from the press pack. This has been an all-out campaign.

And then last night it escalated again.

Keith Jackson went public with the claim that discussions have already been held with alternative candidates. That is not “due diligence.” That is not “covering bases.” That is the equivalent of stabbing the man in the back, the front, and both sides while he’s still sitting in the chair. If that briefing is accurate, it is sabotage – pure and simple.

It’s every bit as egregious as the anonymous briefing that undermined Brendan Rodgers at Celtic Park. You cannot have people inside a football club, in senior positions, undermining their own manager by talking to journalists about replacements.

It makes the job toxic, and it makes it impossible.

If you’re one of the people on that supposed list, my advice is simple: run a mile. Don’t walk – run. Because that job isn’t just a managerial hot seat. It’s an electric chair. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how experienced you are, or how big your reputation is.

The mob rules, and the board caves.

You will get no time, no patience, and no protection. The minute you’re not living up to the delusional standards set for you, the knives will be out.

We’ve seen it happen before. Giovanni van Bronckhorst arrived with a solid reputation and European pedigree. He left with his career in tatters. Philippe Clement was supposed to be the man to steady the ship; he barely lasted long enough to get his feet under the desk before the hounds were howling for blood. Before them, there were others. It is a job that devours reputations. Once you’ve sat in that dugout, you rarely walk away with your career enhanced. More often than not, you leave it shredded.

That’s the culture. And it’s not new.

It doesn’t matter if you change the board, or change the manager, or even change the owner – nothing shifts it. It is baked into the DNA of the place. Dysfunction is not an accident at Ibrox, it’s the operating system.

The mob screams, the media eggs it on, and the board bends. That cycle has been running for years, and nothing has altered it.

That’s why I say it without hesitation: it is probably the most toxic managerial job in British football, and maybe one of the most dangerous reputationally in all of Europe. If the board does what the mob wants and sacks Martin after ten games, it will not make the job any more attractive. It will not cleanse the toxicity.

It will only confirm the worst reputation the club already has – that no one gets time, that no one gets protection, and that no one ever truly has a chance.

And here’s the thing: it’s not even entirely Martin’s fault if he’s struggling.

Of course he’s not had a great start. Of course there are questions about tactics and selections. But how could anyone succeed under this kind of pressure? From the moment he arrived, he’s been undermined, second-guessed, and written off. It’s impossible to build something in that environment.

If he fails, he fails. But the next guy will fail too. And the one after that. Because no one can succeed in conditions where you’re being knifed before you’ve even finished unpacking your boxes. The only way Ibrox will ever change is if the people at the very top stop pandering to the mob and tell them, “No, this is the manager, and he gets time.”

But they won’t do that. They never do.

They’re too busy dancing to the tune of the stands. And that’s why, long-term, the club is on a collision course with disaster.

The directors may think they’re serving the support by giving them what they want every time, but the truth is they are destroying the investment.

Whatever money has gone into that club is being frittered away on short-term decisions that are driven not by strategy but by panic. They bought themselves a headache, and as long as they indulge this culture, it will only get worse.

Russell Martin never stood a chance. That’s the reality.

And because of that, neither will the next man. Or the one after him. That job doesn’t build careers, it wrecks them. It doesn’t make reputations, it shatters them. The only constant is the chaos. The only certainty is the dysfunction.