Fear and loathing in Falkirk. Martin is gone, but the chaos at Ibrox goes on.

Last night the Ibrox club said farewell to their manager Russell Martin.

His tenure was a disaster for the club in every way, an expensive disaster. What they do now is anyone’s guess.

The angry mob has gotten its way. If it continues to then it’ll be Gerrard, on a huge salary, trying to make something of their squad.

The end was unedifying to say the least.

Yesterday in Falkirk, their fans once again showed the level of their stupidity when they blockaded an empty team bus and then stood there, jaws agape, as the manager was smuggled out the back and into a car with a police escort.

It summed them up perfectly – they picketed an empty bus. The actual target of their ire slipped quietly away while they fumed at fresh air.

It didn’t feel like a result that would be survivable. One win in seven league games would doom almost any manager at that club, yet perhaps that is precisely the point. Perhaps that is why the board took so long to pull the trigger. They knew that if they offered this guy up as a blood sacrifice, the next man would be under pressure from day one.

A couple of poor results and those fans will be back outside again, blockading buses and raging into the void. And next time their rage won’t stop at the dugout.

I listened to Martin’s final interview and, like their supporters, I was struck by a few things. First, he was still very full of himself. He is in love with his own supposed talents. He talks constantly about how his ideas got him to Ibrox in the first place. I’m slightly baffled as to how he justifies that with the career he has had so far – one without notable success, one with little to show beyond a remarkable ability to hype himself.

That ability is, of course, what got him the job.

He impressed people inside the club with talk of philosophy, systems and structure. He sold the idea that he could impose discipline and a coherent style. He doubled down in the interview, insisting that scraping through wins wasn’t sustainable, that he wanted to build something more permanent. Their fans were never going to love that.

He was, in that respect, the first Ibrox manager in years to argue against the instant-fix mentality. The first who seemed to genuinely believe he could construct something lasting if given time and space.

Time and space, however, are not currencies that club’s supporters deal in. They operate entirely in the short term. Yet when fans act like this, boards over there cave. Always. That is why there is never any long-term vision over there.

Every manager who sits in their dugout has to fight against the same forces.

The moment insanity fully gripped the place was the sacking of van Bronckhorst. The man won them a Scottish Cup and got them to a European final. If even he was judged on failing to topple Celtic then who on earth is ever going to get the time and patience required?

Yesterday those same fans booed their own manager after his team scored the opening goal.

Think about that. They jeered the manager at the moment his side went in front. It proved this wasn’t about results. This was something pathological, something darker. This was hatred. They didn’t want him to succeed. They didn’t want any sign that he might succeed. That’s the rot at the heart of that club.

It all ties into something I’ve written about before, often and at length: they are a club which has found its level and they refuse to accept it.

They’ve won a handful of trophies in the past decade. They are second best to Celtic year after year after year. Whatever fantasy their supporters cling to, whatever their directors tell themselves, it should be plain as day now – this is who they are.

They are not a European powerhouse. They are a mid-tier, provincial club who occasionally stumbles into a moment of glory but spends most of its existence in Celtic’s shadow. That’s their stature. That’s their truth.

The sooner their supporters accept that, the easier their lives will be. Acceptance would spare them a lot of embarrassment.

Instead, they rage against reality itself. They expect their club to be something it cannot be, and when the inevitable happens – when another title goes to Glasgow’s East End – they lash out at the latest poor sap in the dugout.

The cycle keeps repeating: van Bronckhorst, Beale, Clement … now Martin. Each one walked in burdened by expectation before they’d even unpacked their pencils. Each one was crushed under the same weight.

What image did they present to the world yesterday?

Angry faces crowding around a bus. Shouting at a car carrying the manager under police escort. An appalling image, one that reflects terribly on them and on the institution they worship. It makes the club look like a madhouse.

It makes it very hard for any director to approach a serious candidate and ask him to take the job. Why would any manager of substance look at this circus and want to be part of it?

This is where the “fear and loathing” comes in.

The loathing part is obvious. They despise anyone who stands in the way of their delusions. They even despise reality itself.

The missing ingredient is fear. I find this remarkable. They ought to be afraid. Afraid that they have made the job so toxic no credible manager will touch it. Afraid that their endless howling makes them look like lunatics in the eyes of the football world. Afraid that every act of mob fury pushes them further into irrelevance.

Instead, loathing has swallowed everything else. They are so consumed by hatred that they cannot see what should terrify them – that they are poisoning their own well, making their club ever harder to manage, and ensuring that every man who takes the reins will be doomed before he starts.

Fear should be the natural response to such reckless self-destruction. It has been drowned out. All that remains is loathing. Loathing for Martin. Loathing for their directors. Loathing for anyone who tells them the truth about what they are: a club that has to come to terms with second place, with mediocrity.

They cannot live with that truth. They will not adapt to that reality.

So, they boo, and they rage, and they blockade empty buses. They destroy their own managers and then wonder why nothing changes.

It is not merely farcical; it is tragic. By abandoning fear – by giving themselves over entirely to loathing – they have ensured that nothing, no appointment, no philosophy, no so-called rebuild, will ever change their fate.

This is their level. This is who they are. Fear and Loathing at Falkirk was just the latest chapter in a story that keeps on repeating itself. Martin is gone. They think that’s a victory. But they have doomed the next guy before he’s in the job.