‘Just how much time can Rangers waste? It’s not happening under Caixinha’
SERIOUS question. How much more time can Rangers afford to waste? Three months? Six? A whole season spent wandering off down another dead end and simply
hoping things pan out? That won’t wash with supporters who, after too long in the wilderness, are hardly being unreasonable in demanding evidence of their club heading in the right direction. Now. If not sooner.
This season was supposed to be about making up for the lost years. About finally reclaiming a position of prominence within the Scottish game.
It’s not happening. And it’s not going to happen as long as Pedro Caixinha is calling the shots.
Let the Rangers head coach speak about proof of progress. His latest spiel involves arguing that teams showing the home side ‘respect’ at Ibrox — sitting deep and looking to frustrate the mighty Teddy Bears — is a sign of how much improvement there has been on his watch.
Seriously. We only didn’t win because the other guys worked so hard to shut us down. Wow.
At the end of a week when he also argued that losing was a type of victory in its own right, there is a strong temptation to pounce upon his Ian Cathro-esque pronouncements as comedy gold.
If neutrals and fans of rival clubs are liable — and entirely entitled — to make sport over the continued chaos down Govan way, Rangers punters are, however, unlikely to share in the giggles.
Because it’s not just the unimpressive start to this Premiership campaign that is putting them in bad humour and undermining any confidence they might have retained in Caixinha.
Nobody, absolutely nobody, is damning the man purely on the evidence of three league fixtures.
Even if two of those games — the home defeat to a newly-promoted Hibs side since turned over by Hamilton, followed by failure to beat a manager-less Hearts team always likely to defend in depth at a venue once hailed as a fortress — are grounds for serious censure.
No, it’s a cumulative thing, a once creeping, now steamrolling sense of supporters having seen more than enough to make up their minds.
Being completely routed by Celtic never adds to a Rangers manager’s standing, of course, and Caixinha looked utterly bemused by April’s 5-1 thrashing at Ibrox. Following that with a first home loss in 26 years to Aberdeen — the only other rivalry that matters to fans — didn’t help, either.
And even those who cut Pedro slack because he was working with another manager’s team, trying to make bricks from the straw men left behind by Mark Warburton, were pushed towards mutiny by literally the most embarrassing European result in the history of Scottish football.
And now this, an unconvincing, underwhelming, unimpressive start to a league season that leaves them trailing not just Celtic but four other teams — the Dons included — in the table.
It’s enough, more than enough, to have a growing minority of supporters — inching towards a majority — close to losing all patience. Never mind the quirks of footballing fate that have seen seemingly every Rangers player cut loose by Caixinha make electrifying, goal-scoring, matchwinning starts to careers elsewhere. That’s just the game kicking a man when he’s down.
The fans who watch Pedro’s team, who scrutinise his words of wisdom in the hope of greater comprehension, cannot be satisfied. Nor should they be.
The manager has been backed with serious money in the summer, enough cash to have been able to close the gap on Celtic. Or at least Aberdeen.
Yet it already looks as if Derek McInnes has recruited more wisely and effectively at Pittodrie. With a fraction of the funds.
This week, as Rangers fans studiously ignore all news from Celtic’s formality of a Champions League play-off second leg in Kazakhstan, they’ll have plenty of time to ponder their own club’s present trajectory.
They’ll have a few hours, too, on the road to Sunday’s away game against Ross County to mull things over further.
God forbid Caixinha’s team should slip up in Dingwall, a place that — on certain bleak days — feels very close to the end of the earth.
Even if they romp to victory, there is a suspicion that it will only partially allay the concerns of supporters.
For they have travelled too far, touring every footballing outpost in Scotland over the past five years, to be in the mood for another lengthy detour.