RUSSELL MARTIN says if anything his philosophy has got MORE extreme after the trauma of being sacked amid Southampton’s Premier League relegation campaign.
The former Ibrox central defender has emerged as the clear frontrunner to replace Philippe Clement as the next permanent manager of Rangers.
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Things unravelled badly for newly promoted Saints in the rarefied air of the Premier League – he was sacked immediately after a defeat against Spurs which was their 13th in the league this campaign from 16 games.
But one of Marting’s main selling points as a head coach for Rangers is the possession-heavy (and high pressing) game that he likes to play – having set the Championship record of a remarkable 566 passes in the first half of a league match against Sheffield Wednesday.
And he stands by that – even making it more EXTREME – even if he did learn one harsh lesson through his Premier League ordeal.
Martin outlined his football philosophy in a recent The Rest is Football podcast with Gary Lineker.
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He said: “I’m not miles away from where I started if that makes sense.
“I speak to a lot of managers and they have this idea at the start … but I’m not far away from where I started off at all.
“In fact I’ve probably gone a bit more extreme than I would have done at the start.
“You work things out during the process – what works. what’s good.
“There things we can definitely do better and I need to do everything I can to get to a level where I scan showcase that again. And show that it DOES work and not just with the best players.”
So why did things go so wrong in the top flight south of the border?
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Well, for starters he reckons the team he had at Southampton in the Premier League was actually WEAKER than the one he had in the Championship.
And secondly, he reckons he changed his formation too much geared on who is team was about to play against.
He certainly sees no contradiction in teams who can play a possession based game but also press high.
He said: “To dominate the ball, you need to press high and you need to get the ball back quickly or else you can’t have 60% possession like I’ve had.
“For some reason, when I get questioned about it a lot, it is like you can’t do both but I really believe you can.
“To have the ball you need to be able to press high, and counter press a lot.
“People will say you can maybe be a bit more pragmatic in the build and play from there. My feeling is that I have learned a lot but would I do things differently? No.
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“I changed formation too much. Although the concept doesn’t change, it needs to be this way or that way.
“But for me that’s a concept of the game, it’s not formulaic. The problem was we weren’t winning, rather than being really consistent with the shape, I was overthinking a bit.
“Like your chasing your tail again, we’re going to City away so we are going to play a back five, once we broke through the city press which we did a lot, Pep Guardiola was very complimentary – we had two full backs playing wing back at the top end of the pitch and we couldn’t finish off.
“Yeah I think [I should have changed less] think it would have given us something more tangible to look back on
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“Cultural context is really important. People forget that in football a lot. The culture of the club, what it’s about, what it has been used to. I’m not sure there’s certain clubs I could go into and ask for real patience when the goalie is standing on the ball for 25 minutes and they’re wanting it put forward because that’s what they’re used to.
“So I realised I limited my options.”
