New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits has sold 20+million copies on a simple pretence - that habit is stronger than willpower. If you want to change something, whether it's your health or organisation, focus less on what the end goal looks like and more on how you will achieve it.
Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
How does this translate to Rangers' home draw against Dundee? It explains much of what played out during another bland, tumultuous affair (the type of which stretches back far beyond this season) and what the club's new owners and Russell Martin inherit. This is a team that, more often than not, fails to rise to the level of their goals, or their ceiling (to win) and instead falls back to the floor. Their habits have been their undoing for quite some time. As Martin admitted post-match, changing this cycle is about "creating really good habits".
Rangers have been caught in a cycle of focusing on goals over systems and Martin’s appointment is supposed to change that. The theory is sound: find a style that works, recruit around that model and appoint a man to coach the team and convince the public it will work. The issue is, especially here, season 2025/26 does not exist in a vacuum but, within the social experiment Rangers have exposed supporters to for nearly a decade and a half.
Saturday’s 90 minutes were an encapsulation of the fact that if Martin is to be a success at Ibrox, he needs to change habits. Only lifting the floor - radically altering the response under pressure - alters the end to this movie, which feels oh so familiar.
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Two extremes from the weekend are not mutually exclusive. It is too soon to judge much at all about Martin for anyone removing the emotion from this situation. No one and nothing could or can fix this side quickly. And yet for supporters who have watched that performance under six managers since 2018, heard the phrase rebuild enough to become numb to such intentions and witnessed many in the dugout talk their way towards a future past this maddening, hope-sapping, reality, where is the room for patience when it’s plausible Celtic arrive for the first Old Firm game of the season with the opportunity to build a 10-point gap by September 1? Where is the space for understanding when dropping points against a Dundee side who are already out of the League Cup?
The rules are different in Glasgow and while Martin is here for the long haul regardless, even new ownership does not equate to much patience. This is a crowd who has not watched, in the flesh, a successful league season since 2012; who can blame them for being reserved and cautious? Call it a clean slate, but when supporters watch similar bodies make similar mistakes, it’s hard to elicit any other emotion aside from frustration and resignation - habits.
Martin is far from the first to watch a version of this Rangers squad live up to this reputation - that only external factors can inject intensity into their performance. Going down to 10 men, a half-time reset, or conceding all provoke a higher tempo that, simply, Rangers cannot set with the ball from the first whistle. Consolation of yesterday’s race chart, with indents marking a chance, shows how little was fashioned until very late on.
Indeed, Dundee goalkeeper Joe McCracken made his first save in the 49th minute. As shown below, Rangers only managed one attempt inside the box that wasn't blocked before half-time.
Why does this happen? The answer is multi-faceted, but at its core, and where Martin is right and merits patience, is habits. None of the various footballing ideas sold to versions of this squad in recent years has worked, so instead of following a script, the easy option is taken. Seven weeks of training one system, considering only about 40% of the current playing squad are new arrivals, clearly is not as strong as the fear and instincts that overtake on a day like Saturday.
Perhaps the downside of Martin’s system, as witnessed by the number of passes but failure to hit 1xG until after 80 minutes, is that control can be prioritised over risk. As he admitted post-match on Saturday, sometimes the most effective way to break down a low block is losing the ball in an advanced area, coaxing the opposition to forget about their defensive shape for a second and regaining possession to attack in that moment.
With Dundee in a back five shape, the spaces available to wingers Oliver Antman and Djeidi Gassama, so impressive against Plzen, were minimal. Gaps existed over the top (which Rangers never tried to target, presumably for fear of losing possession) or in front of the defence.
Jefte attempted his side’s most shots (4) ahead of Joe Rothwell (3). The five most common passing combinations were all amongst the back four. Cyriel Dessers did not take a shot until his offside effort in injury time. John Souttar played 129 passes in the game, only a few more than the 166 that the entire Rangers midfield managed all game (including substitutes).
Without any pace to the play, this became an exercise in ball retention in the wrong areas. Martin used the improvement facing a pressing team in Plzen after the struggles against Motherwell as evidence that his team will learn from Saturday, but surely he and they could’ve consulted anyone pre-match to predict what was to come? As the game’s pass map demonstrates, there was nowhere near enough central penetration and with Dessers’ game not at its strongest when the Nigerian is playing with his back to goal, Diomande lacking a goalthreat and Cameron often drifting wide to create spaces, it was all too easy for Dundee to usher Rangers out and around their block.
Martin explained: "A lack of speed with the ball, a lack of aggression with the ball. There's still a bit of tension among some of the guys that you don't see day-to-day."
This, and we cannot escape such a fact, also comes down to individuals. It is a misconception that Martin wants to orchestrate this team like a puppeteer at the side of the pitch, even the most involved coaches know that they set the parameters for players to thrive within. They cannot control a full-back chopping inside and turning back, or another deep cross being played to pass on responsibility. Ask yourself, how many protagonists were out there? Again, whoever Rangers appointed this summer required three or four, at least, new leaders who can see Saturday as an opportunity, not another afternoon to exist through.
It was noticeable how active Martin was in trying to up the tempo yesterday with his own body language, drawing memories of Barry Ferguson often edging onto the park during his interim spell, perplexed at the absence of energy. Martin clapped and cajoled; he tried to edge his team to position themselves higher up the park, encouraging quicker passes. Again, it was only when Rangers had to up it, after Djiga's red, that they did, sort of. The tempo they played at following James Tavernier's equaliser is what they should start games with, and yet they never do.
There is so much evidence from around world football that a version of the style Martin wants to play is the best way to win. Why? Celtic have dominated Scottish football by dominating the ball. Name the last major league not won by a side that didn't favour possession? However, football is not played on the training pitch but in this case, in one of it's toughest environments, where you have to always set the tempo, rely on habits, trust the work.
The reason Martin has full-backs popping up inside the pitch and midfielders often taking possession in wide zones is to create ‘separation’ - small, triggered rotations enable players to get an ounce of space and play a step ahead of their direct marker, putting them on the back foot and drawing out the next man. The issue is, if not done at speed, spaces are not there to be exploited. How often on Saturday were passes that should’ve broken lines played backwards, and vice-versa, as seen in the lead-up to Djiga’s red as John Souttar took a risk with a pass into Dessers that was cut out? Even then, how Dundee forced a last-man-red-card scenario despite Rangers’ starting point below is another example of lethargy.
The best tactical system in the world requires aggression and intensity against packed defences to create space. The most detailed approach relies on energy and application. And as Ibrox became more impatient on Saturday, the home side’s bad habits started to creep in.
That is where the theory of Martin makes sense, as he himself proclaimed yesterday, “Every club I’ve been at there is a bit of pain at the start, but it’s so worth it when you get through that”.
The rules are so different up the road, though. Time works differently. Forgot the Kieran Dowell argument or many aspects of the performance that will surely frustrate Martin as much as any, what the new head coach is completely right to identify is this - a team is as successful as the habits they fall back on, and Rangers' remain full of self-sabotage.
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