I'm a body language expert - Rangers boss feels the pressure

The head coach has yet to secure a league win in charge after his side drew 1-1 with St Mirren at the weekend. 

That came off the back of a 3-1 defeat to Club Brugge in the first leg of a crucial Champions League playoff, in which Rangers conceded two calamitous early goals. 

“He's [Martin] said that we know we won't concede two goals again like that but he has no confidence in what he’s saying,” Stanton told OLBG. “You can see he was looking up for answers, and that’s a behaviour that suggests he is accessing his imagination. 

“He is imagining what to say and forming his answer in his mind rather than speaking with conviction on what he feels.

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“Later on, as he gets more frustrated, he looks down, and this tends to be behaviour that means a person is accessing their gut instincts with what we call kinesthetics.

“He displays anger and a sign of disgust when he accesses those gut feelings and if you notice he crinkles his nose, which is a microexpression.

“It lasts maybe a fifth of a second but that’s the physical expression of disgust when he’s having to answer as he is deflecting the poor performance onto the team rather than himself.”

Martin has criticised his players several times in his tenure thus far, although perhaps no more so than after Rangers drew 1-1 with Motherwell on the opening weekend of the league season at Fir Park. 

“I think he was trying to come over like he is someone who is not going to take any nonsense when he spoke out about his team after they drew with Motherwell,” said Stanton. “But that behaviour has continued and so have the poor performances so nothing's happened. 

“I think he's now feeling even more under pressure as a result because he's not delivering.

“It's all well and good saying I'm going to start kicking ass, taking names, but if you don't follow through on that and end up with another disastrous result you lose credibility, and that can lose your grip on the dressing room.

“If you are going to keep throwing your team under the bus rather than saying I'm the guy that's ultimately responsible, the buck stops with me, it will only go one way.

“It's gonna be very interesting to see what happens now but he’s not a cat and even if he was I don't think he's got too many lives left at this rate and I think he knows what could be coming too.”