Shortest reign in club history? Russell Martin sacked by Rangers after just 17 games

Unwanted record 

On Sunday evening Rangers confirmed that they had parted ways with head coach Russell Martin. "While all transition periods require some time, results have not met the club's expectations," read a statement on the club website. "Russell and his staff have worked exceptionally hard throughout their time at the club. We thank them for their efforts and wish them well for the future." The club also confirmed that assistant head coach Matt Gill and first team coach Mike Williamson had also departed the club.

While managerial changes are rarely unexpected, Martin's departure from Rangers was undoubtedly a long time coming and something that most fans of the club had demanded for quite some time. Since joining the club in the summer to replace Philippe Clement, Martin had won just five of his first 17 matches in charge of the Glasgow giants. And following a drab 1-1 draw with Falkirk on Sunday, which left his side in eighth place and just four points above bottom of the Scottish Premiership table, the Ibrox side clearly felt the time had come to draw a line under Martin's tenure at the club.

However, while Martin's poor record on the pitch is something the young manager will look to forget as quickly as possible, another record off the pitch is one that may stick to him for quite some time. Having coached just 17 games at the club, Martin's time in Glasgow stood at just 122 days. Which, unsurprisingly, is the shortest tenure ever for a full-time, permanent manager at Rangers over the entire course of the club's 153-year history.

When we take a look through the history of Rangers managers, we find that Martin's time in Glasgow is some way short of Paul Le Guen's 186-day stint in the dugout. And as we can see in the graphic above, Martin also falls short of Pedro Caixinha's doomed spell in charge of the club in 2017, which lasted just 229 days. And when we couple those figures with the fact that Martin's record of just 1.24 points per game at the club also falls well short of Le Guen's (1.77), Caixinha's (1.81) and Clement's (2.09), it becomes clear for all to see that Martin simply wasn't the right man for the job.