CAIXINHA’S HEAD START WAS THE KEY, SAYS KING
AS lessons go, it was a tough one to learn. It could stand Pedro Caixinha in good stead, though. Losing 5-1 to Celtic once in a campaign was bad enough for Rangers but doing it for a second time put the seal on a season to forget.
The final Old Firm fixture of the term was the last chance for a squad that had underperformed and underachieved to salvage some morsel of pride. Once again, and perhaps not unsurprisingly, they failed.
It is often said that you learn more in defeat than you do in victory. And chairman Dave King reckons that will be the case for Caixinha as Rangers prepare for the new campaign with similar ambitions.
“I will repeat a bit of what I said last year, which didn’t come true,” King said.
“That we were going to try to compete with Celtic for the Premiership.
“I think it was very disappointing the way last season turned out.
“If I look at the business Pedro has done, his player plan was very different to Mark Warburton’s.
“It’s not a direct criticism of Mark, although it probably is in a certain sense.
“The player plan was more positional in that we needed to do this and we needed to do that. It evolved.
“Pedro has been very firm. We brought him in early for a reason – to assess his squad.
“Pedro asked me the question the very first time I met him. He said, ‘Dave, why did you pay the compensation to get me in when you could have waited until the end of May and got it for free?
“I said, ‘the reason we did that is we will be in Europe, we have a new manager coming in and we need you to come in and assess the quality of the squad in the way you want to play.’
“The importance of that was emphasised by the Celtic 5-1 game. I think that was a very important game for Pedro.
“If he had gone against what he was trying to achieve and trying to shore it up and get a 1-1 draw he wouldn’t have learned about the players.
“He knew what he wanted to do. He was testing the players in a competitive environment.”
THE downside of bringing Caixinha in from AlGharafa before the end of the season was that it left him open to suffering the kind of defeat that Celtic in- flicted. The positives have outweighed the negatives for Rangers, though.
After seeing his side in action for several weeks, the 46-yearold has spent the last month overhauling the Light Blues squad.
Six players have arrived so far this summer and there are still a couple of deals to be done. The Ibrox exodus will then be stepped up.
King added: “If we had brought him in at the end of May he would have got the team for pre-season training, got them running around and gone straight into Europa League qualifiers.
“He tested them against Celtic and didn’t abandon them and say, ‘let’s lose 2-1 or draw 1-1.’ He tested the players and we saw an evolution in his player plan.
“He learned a lot about the ability and character of the players in his squad in those weeks at the end of the season and identified specific players.
“It’s probably fair to say we are now i n the high 90s percentage wise in terms of getting the players he wanted.
“Okay we’ve had to invest money, but that’s a commitment we made to the club.
“What we can say is we are happy with the players he got.”
IT HAS been a summer of change on and off the park for Rangers and there is a renewed sense of optimism amongst supporters as the countdown continues to the new campaign.
The appointment of Mark Allen as director of football this week was another step in the right direction as he left Manchester City to make the move north of the border.
For too long, there has been as much focus on court cases as football matches and headlines have been made on the front pages as often as the back. Now, the landscape is changing for the better.
King said: “If you go back two years ago then I think there was a recognition of Rangers as a football club. Rangers is Rangers.
“But there was still a concern about the turmoil that was going to go on and whether this rebuilding exercise was going to work.
“I think what we have seen in the last year is a normalisation of that situation. I think people accept the club is on the way back.
“That the rebuilding programme is working – commercially, behind the scenes.
“I think there is a greater trust in everything about Rangers. We know the club, but where will it be in two years’ time?
“Now we have someone like Mark who sees Rangers as a bigger opportunity and is not worried about where Rangers will be in two years’ time.
“He is not worried about our ambition, can see what we are doing. And whereas last season was disappointing, the priority last year was to get into Europe. We are there and we are rebuilding the squad.”
He learned a lot about the ability and the character of the players in the game