Ifs, Buts and the Reset

There are plenty of ifs, buts and maybes when you pit Martin against Rohl, and that’s the point — it’s not neat. You can imagine scenarios where Martin suddenly gets a tune out of the players and draws become wins. Equally, you can see the malaise that was setting in and wonder if that turnaround ever really had a chance. I’m just glad the club decided to hit reset and we have six games to find out what this group can do.

Why the Martin question carries a shadow

To be fair, the upside case for Martin is obvious: better cohesion, a run of form, belief returning and the points follow. But belief doesn’t appear out of nowhere. When players are frayed, relationships are strained and the air in the dressing room isn’t right, the manager’s job becomes twice as hard. That’s what worries me looking back — there were signs of a malaise and, for all the hypotheticals, I couldn’t honestly picture a neat recovery without changes behind the scenes.

Rohl gave us a reset, not a miracle cure

Equally, starting with Rohl wouldn’t have guaranteed a straight line to success. We dropped points under him against the likes of Motherwell, Livi and Celtic, so you can’t simply flip every draw into a win and pretend the season sorts itself. Rohl’s arrival offered a reset — a chance to change the tone, to try different ideas and to lift standards. That matters. It doesn’t erase the mistakes or the dropped points, but it does give a platform.

What matters now: focus on the last six

The important bit now is the final six games. Tiny margins decide how the season reads in the end. It’s about tempo, focus, pressing for 90 minutes and unity off the pitch as much as on it. We should keep expectations realistic — nothing is fixed — but there’s a clear opportunity to finish stronger than where we were. I’d rather be watching these next fixtures with a chance than wondering where we’d have ended up stuck in the same malaise. Let’s see how the group responds.

Written by MrPotatoHead: 7 June 2026