In the first of an exclusive three-part interview, Moore sits down with Record Sport to review his Ibrox loan spell

By the end of Russell Martin’s short 122-day reign, the fingers of blame were pointing him where to go.

On a grey day in Falkirk, the only thing bleaker than the dark skies above was the haggard expression on the Ibrox manager’s face as he ran out of road at Rangers. The fact the beleaguered boss needed a police escort to safely perform the U-turn that got him out of town tells you all you need to know about the levels of anger simmering through the Light Blue legions at the time.

It was a period when few were safe from the fans’ wrath.

Martin was first to go. Chief exec Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell would follow soon after as both men were found to be just as culpable for a disastrous start to the season that saw Rangers spill 13 points from their first seven league games and suffer a record-equalling 6-0 thrashing at the hands of Club Brugge.

But one man who was not looking to shift fault onto Martin was Mikey Moore.

The Tottenham teenager had arrived from North London with a soaring reputation as one of English football’s brightest young talents. Yet by the time Martin was being whisked away from the Falkirk Stadium with the blues and twos flashing, some fans were already sounding the panic alarm over Moore’s form.

Red tape meant he missed the first six games of the season as Gers were made to wait for the Spurs kid to turn 18 before he could make his debut against Alloa in mid-August. By the time Martin’s tenure was collapsing two months later, the Three Lions youth cap had registered a mere six starts, no goals and no assists.

Some claimed that was down to the rigid tactics employed by the dogmatic zealot in the dugout. But not Moore. If anyone was to blame for his underwhelming start in Glasgow, it was himself.

“Russell Martin has got his structure and his way of playing but I really respect him as a guy,” he told Record Sport in the first of an exclusive three-part interview. “I get it didn't go the way he wanted at Rangers. But he brought me to the club and I thought he was a really good guy. He tried to help me but obviously I wasn't performing my best.

“Maybe there were times under Russell I wasn’t playing in the best, best position to get the most out of me. But I've got to take responsibility for the way I performed at that time. No matter where I am put on the pitch, the standards I set for myself stay the same and the way I was playing at that point was unacceptable.

“Even coming home, my dad said to me, ‘I never want to see you play like that again, no matter where you are.’ I was very poor for the first few weeks but I can't blame me not doing my technical basics on the position a manager is playing me in. So yeah, I could have maybe played in positions that suited me better but you're never going to set the tactics as a player. Russell put trust in me and he called me into a few meetings to try to help me — but I've got to take responsibility myself and say I should have been better. It’s down to me really.”

It soon became clear, though, that this was a kid with a rare attitude. There are plenty of characters throughout the game whose first instinct when things spin off the road is to throw those around them under the bus or to look for excuses. But on the day he finally bagged his first Rangers goal in a 3-0 win over Dundee at the start of November, he embraced the suffocating pressure levels he was experiencing at the club, insisting it would only help toughen him up for the Premier League career he hopes lies in his future.

He said: “I think if you’re not ready to accept that responsibility, then it's a big problem for you as an individual. You can easily pass the blame onto other people and say that it's the manager or say that it's this person. But I'm on a football pitch with 11 players on each side. If I'm not affecting the game that's on me.

“There are things managers can do to help you out with, especially as a young player. But it's your job to learn your trade, learn how to play men's football. Obviously there are some tactical things that have an impact but ultimately it comes down to how much you want to run, how much you want to take care of your basics on the pitch. So for me I take responsibility for my first few months at the club. I'm never going to say it was Russell Martin's fault or someone else's fault. It was me who quite clearly wasn't technically good enough in a lot of games.”

Ultimately, however, it was Martin who carried the can for the nightmare start to the season as he was axed after just 16 games in charge. It came after weeks of growing tension in which he was repeatedly told to “get to f**k” by the seething support.

Moore admitted: “Yeah, Russell didn't have it nice. He got it quite bad but that's what happens when you don’t win enough games. Now he's obviously over at Leicester and I see that he's picked up a few wins in a row. Russell has his way of playing and he really trusts that.

“It can work in certain circumstances but you're not going to have that time at Rangers. I think he knows that himself. He knows that you haven’t got the time to lose games because every game matters when you’re trying to build a title run. But at the same time I felt quite sorry for him because he was a really good guy and cared a lot. Obviously it just wasn't meant to be. That’s football.”

Martin may not have seen the best of Moore but Rohl definitely did. Seven goals and four assists doesn’t tell the story of the growing influence Moore exerted on the Light Blues once Rohl freed him of the shackles that had locked him out on the wing under Martin.

“Danny came in and straight away he said to me, ‘You're going to be one of our best players’,” said Moore, last season’s PFA Scotland young player of the year. "I remember one of his first games was down at Kilmarnock. We won 3-0 and I started on the bench. I came on in about the 50th minute and scored. But early in the day he called me in. He said, ‘You're not going to start today but I promise you you'll be one of our best players’. And from there I kind of got a new energy.

“I just wanted to run, I just wanted to get on the ball and show what I can do. I think I realised I can play at this level, I can get on the ball and help the team. From there I really pushed on and he really showed a lot of trust in me, so I'm very thankful to him for that.”