Win-or-bust tie with Panathinaikos is coming a little too quickly for Rangers boss Martin, writes John McGarry

Daily Mail​

a day ago

Rangers' impending Champions League qualifier against Panathinaikos almost feels like a rude interruption this summer.
The town of Portrush won't even be back to normal after the conclusion of The Open on Monday by the time Russell Martin takes his seat in the media room at Auchenhowie ahead of the first leg of his side's second qualifying round tie the following evening.
The days when football traditionally cleared the stage for other sports for a couple of months are well gone.
Martin could be forgiven for feeling this game is all coming a little too quickly.
He was appointed Barry Ferguson's successor on June 5. The players only returned for pre-season training on June 23 and there's been a whirlwind of transfer activity since then, predominately incoming.
Now here we are, in the middle of July, contemplating a match of the utmost importance at the start of a new era.
For all Philippe Clement endured the nightmare of the Ibrox building works fiasco last summer, he at least had a tasty trip to Tynecastle to get his teeth into before his side faced Dynamo Kyiv in the Polish city of Lublin.
Martin will have had friendlies against Club Brugge and Barnsley and some closed-door matches before getting down to business. You can do as many double training sessions as you like in the heat of St George's Park. Nothing prepares players for competitive matches quite like competitive matches.
The history books are littered with tales of near misses and calamities for Scottish clubs at this brutally early juncture and Rangers have many of their own entries that they'd rather forget.
In 1998, Dick Advocaat's expensively assembled squad took the field for the first time against Irish side Shelbourne at Tranmere's Prenton Park. They were three goals down to the part-time outfit inside an hour before finding their sea legs and rallying to a 5-3 win.
A decade on, fresh from losing the UEFA Cup final to Zenit St Petersburg in Manchester, Walter Smith's men crashed out of the Champions League by losing 2-1 away to FBK Kaunas after a goalless home leg. 'From the sublime to the ridiculous,' he said ruefully that night in Lithuania.
Most infamously, eight years ago, Pedro Caixinha's trip to Luxembourg ended in abject humiliation as he stood in shrubbery while remonstrating with irate supporters. Progres Niedercorn's aggregate triumph was even more remarkable for the fact that Rangers narrowly won the first leg in Glasgow.
Even with that game against Hearts cutting the ribbon on last season, Clement's side still came up short against a Kyiv side whose limitations were laid bare by their eventual 34th-place finish in a 36-team Europa League group.
Dynamo were then ranked 77th in UEFA's club rankings and have since slipped to 113th.
Panathinaikos are currently 94th, up 17 places in the space of a year on the back of an impressive run to the last 16 of the Conference League. Everything points towards them being a tougher nut to crack.
While Martin will take a sliver of encouragement from knowing the Greeks don't start their own league campaign until the third week in August, they are coming off an arduous pre-season in Austria which has seen them go toe-to-toe with the likes of Schalke and Braga.
Rui Vitoria's team finished second behind Olympiacos in the title race last season and boast a string of class acts including Serbian international attacker Filip Duricic.
The task of progressing to the next qualifying round certainly feels a long way from the one presented by Macedonian hopefuls Shkupi in 2018, notably the last occasion a Rangers manager - namely Steven Gerrard - made his debut in Europe.
Frankly, if any occupant of the Ibrox hot seat has faced a tougher opening-night assignment down the years, then no-one can quite recall it.
Martin will need all his experienced players to step up to the plate. Although Leon Balogun and Vaclav Cerny, two of last year's better performers, have moved on, there is still the core of the team which reached the quarter finals of the Europa League last season - Cyriel Dessers, James Tavernier and John Souttar.
Speculation linking Dessers with a move to AEK Athens continues to swirl around but, as things stand, the forward will be travelling to that sprawling city as a Rangers player.
Aside from Dessers' goals, you can understand Martin's reluctance to part with the 30-year-old. Only one of the seven players he has has signed to date - Nasser Djiga - has previously sampled European football while playing for Red Star Belgrade.
In contrast, a Panathinaikos side which held its own against the likes of Ajax and Lens last season, is brimming with seasoned operators at that level.
Max Aarons and Joe Rothwell, who have both joined Rangers from Premier League Bournemouth, would be expected to immediately look at home on the European stage.
Djeidi Gassama, who has just joined from Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship, should also comfortably make the step-up if available and selected.
But it remains to be seen how Thelo Aasgaard and Emmanuel Fernandez, both of whom were playing in the English third tier with Luton and Peterborough respectively last season, bridge the obvious jump in quality.
The same applies to Lyall Cameron - notably the only Scot among Martin's seven summer recruits. Demonstrably good enough to play in the Premiership during his time with Dundee, the 22-year-old must also show he can cut it on the continental stage.
Tasked with changing the fortunes of a team who have become strangers to success in recent times, Martin had no choice but to change so much of the personnel in little over a month.
Although still shy of the round dozen players Clement brought in last summer, he's thrown a lot of darts at the board. Football being football, chances are not all of them will stick.
By the time his side leave the Ibrox arena for the first time next week, though, it's imperative that their trip to Greece for the second leg counts for something.
The group stage of the Champions League is primarily where Rangers' new American owners feel they can make good on their investment. No matter how arduous this task appears for the new man at the helm, a failure to clear the first hurdle is clearly not in their thinking.