At no point in his two years here did Russell Martin need more "backing". He just needed to use what he already had properly, something which was obvious to a lot of the fans and clearly obvious to the owners. The squad he had could have been a lot more competitive than he was making it look, something more than demonstrated by that last ten or so games when we finally stopped fucking around and playing properly.
Going public just made him look like a petulant, arrogant little prat desperate to blame anyone and anything else for the continual failure of his chosen style of play, a theme we've seen consistently repeated with him ever since.
Still, it got him the Southampton job and the chance to make an arse of himself to a much wider audience.