THERE COULD BE FIREWORKS
PEDRO CAIXINHA needs to know something before Hibs arrive in Glasgow today. No one in Scottish football will want to burst his bubble right now more than the man standing in the opposition’s dugout this afternoon. Trust me, I learned a thing or two about Neil Lennon during our time as Old Firm captains, so I have a fair idea what will be going through his head when he returns to Ibrox for the first time as the manager of Hibs. He’ll be bursting to be the first boss in the top flight to throw a spanner in Caixinha’s wheels because the Rangers boss has got off to a flyer with back-to-back wins over Motherwell and Dunfermline in the first few days of the new campaign. And, if I know him at all, he’ll also enjoy running the old gauntlet at the home of his old rivals. It certainly won’t faze him, that’s for sure. He knows the fans will be trying to wind him up and I’m pretty sure he’ll not be shy in giving them some back because he certainly never has been before. He knows he’s going to have 45,000 fans screaming at him and he’ll want nothing more than to silence every single one of them. It’s all just a sideshow but it will add to the sense of theatre and Lenny will relish being back on the centre stage after spending last season in the second tier. But he might have fancied his chances a whole lot better just a week or so ago because Rangers are moving in the right direction under Pedro and have started the season more strongly than many people might have expected. The result and performance on Wednesday night was an indication that things are coming together very nicely indeed. I know what people are going to say: “It was only Dunfermline. They finished last season as the fifth best team in the Championship. So what if you scored six against them? Big deal”. But I take a different approach. You’ve got to beat what is put in front of you and I saw this same Dunfermline side deservedly knock Hearts out of the same competition at Tynecastle the other week. So I was looking at Wednesday night’s match as a potential banana skin for my old club because Dunfermline’s players were going into it high on confidence. But they weren’t just beaten by Rangers. They were demolished by them. And that can only add to the feelgood factor around Caixinha and his players who are now building some serious momentum pretty much for the first time since he took over the job.
Marseille, Watford, Sheffield Wednesday, Motherwell and Dunfermline – it has been a really positive run of results and performances and it points to a team that is getting its act together after a difficult few months.
They’ll be going into this Hibs match bubbling with confidence and that’s such an important factor for any side.
With the added quality that Bruno Alves and Graham Dorrans have brought to the spine of the team things are looking good.
But Lenny knows he can turn all that on its head in 90 minutes and believe me he’ll make sure his players get the message too. He’d love to be the guy who stops Rangers in their tracks.
With him in the dugout and the likes of Anthony Stokes and Efe Ambrose in the Hibs starting 11 it’s as close to an Old Firm game as Rangers could possibly get.
What you’ve got here is a bunch of ex-Celtic guys coming to Ibrox to put one over their old rivals and Lenny will thrive on that.
Yes, he might be the manager of Hibs these days but you can’t rewrite your own history.
He was a major player for Celtic for a number of years and went on to manage them too. It would be stupid not to acknowledge he’ll add real spice to this fixture just by his very presence.
This won’t be just another run-ofthe-mill match. In fact, with all that in mind and given the form both of them are showing early in the season, it’s going to be a cracker.
It’s two managers who are full of passion and emotion. There might well be as many fireworks going off on the touchline as there will be on the pitch and – so long as it doesn’t go overboard – I’m all in favour of that kind of thing,
These are ambitious guys who want to win matches. I suspect they’ll both be battling it out until the end of the season in the top four.
Pedro knows that’s the very least that’s expected of Rangers this season and Lenny has already said he believes Hibs can be the best of the rest after Celtic.
So the competition between both clubs will be ferocious.
Hibs will give Rangers their hardest test yet but the way Pedro and his players have opened up I firmly believe they will make it six points from six which is precisely what they have to do if they want to be taken as serious title contenders.
They have to stay focused on winning and not allow Celtic out of their sights. A defeat today would not drag them back into a crisis but it would change the mood around Ibrox and not for the better.
Right now the crucial thing for Caixinha is to keep the momentum building.
The last thing he needs is to allow Lennon to get in his way.
This won’t be another run-of-themill match. In fact it’s going to be a cracker