TALKING RANGERS
IT IS the dreaded hattrick for any manager ager but when the first two pieces fall into place, ace, the third inevitably follows. ows. Lose the dressing room, om, lose the games, and lose ose your job.
Pedro Caixinha is the latest, but he won’t be the last, to pay the price. As he reflects on his seven months at Rangers, only he will know if he would have done anything differently.
For many Gers fans, the he final acts of the Caixinha inha drama brought back memories of Paul Le Guen’s Ibrox exit. For 2007, read 2017. For Barry Ferguson, read Kenny Miller.
A decade ago, the Frenchman famously fell out with Ferguson and stripped him of the captaincy. Within days, he was sacked.
This term, it was Miller that was banished from the firstteam squad as his relationship with Caixinha broke down. Within weeks, he was sacked.
The respective battles with two high-profile players came amid mounting pressure from the stands as Le Guen and Caixinha struggled to produce performances or reel off results.
“I think it is a similar sort of circumstances but complete opposites at the same time,” former Ibrox defender Ian Murray told Sport - Times.
“There are a couple of parallels in terms of a foreign manager and an experienced player in the squad a n d results haven’t gone for them. But you are talking 10 years on.
“I think these things have happened for years and years, it is not just a case of it being Rangers with foreign managers and experienced players.
“It happens at every club at every level. A new manager comes in and, for whatever reason, they want to change it and ultimately the manager is the boss.
“If Pedro had won the games and Paul Le Guen had won the games, nobody would be talking about it.
“When results aren’t good, then it becomes a huge talking point. It is a gamble that a manager takes.”
The risks that Le Guen and Caixinha took with their actions ultimately backfired on them and the pair will be remembered for all the wrong reasons by the Light Blue legions.
Many supporters decry the so-called ‘player power’ when a manager leaves under a dark cloud but, ultimately, the results speak for themselves.
CAIXINHA’S side beat Hamilton and St Johnstone without Miller, but the defeat to Motherwell and draw with Kilmarnock were blows that he could not recover from.
The Portuguese needed his players to perform to keep him in a job. Once that two-way faith had eroded, the clock was ticking.
“It does happen, of course, and it doesn’t take many to be honest,” Murray said on the theory of a manager ‘losing the dressing room’.
“It doesn’t need seven or eight, it can only take two or three. If you lose them and you don’t get results then the pressure is on. It happens everywhere.
“It is especially hard at a big club because you are under scrutiny all the time and in the goldfish bowl.
“If Rangers had beaten Motherwell and scored the penalty against Kilmarnock, then Pedro is probably still in a job. It shows the fine lines in football and ultimately he has paid with his job.
“People are saying it was the wrong appointment and a stupid appointment but if he had done well, he would have been hailed as a great success.
“It is very easy to point fingers and criticise but nobody goes into a job wanting to fail and nobody picks a manager wanting them to fail. These things happen.
“Once the man is in place, whoever it is, the fans just want to see the team winning.
“Everyone has got their