»KEITH JACKSON

Thelwell and Steinsson's major judgment fail

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WHEN a manager requires a police escort to leave a stadium it's probably time to admit the game is up.

So the end for Russell ‘none of it was my fault’ Martin - confirmed last night - will be seen as an act of compassion and basic humanity.

But it doesn't excuse the inexplicable decision to appoint him in the first place.

And his sacking after just 17 games ought to raise a far more fundamental question over the suitability and credibility of the men who thought it was a good idea when all evidence available to them screamed otherwise.

It stands to reason then that the judgement of Kevin Thelwell and Gretar Steinsson must now be a major concern for the club's owner and self-appointed chairman Andrew Cavenagh.

Cavenagh delegated the responsibility of recruiting a manager to this pair and the American must be deeply regretting that decision already.

There's even a suggestion that he had decided some weeks ago to pull the trigger on Martin but that he was talked out of doing so by Thelwell.

If that's the case, then it's hard to see how the sporting director can survive this excruciating embarrassment.

Put it this way, when he first proposed his own son as the best qualified candidate for the job of head of recruitment at Rangers he should probably have been escorted directly off the premises even then.

Someone somewhere ought to have pulled him to one side and suggested very strongly that he might be in danger of losing his own mind, as a result of the stress levels which have been placed upon him.