King claims Old Firm rout can be making of Caixinha
● Rangers chairman sees positives in fact that record 5-1 home defeat by Celtic told manager all he needed to know about squad
It was the match which rewrote the Old Firm record books. Celtic ruthlessly exposed the gulf between themselves and Rangers in a season of unprecedented domestic dominance enjoyed by Brendan Rodgers and his players.
For Pedro Caixinha, it meant that the early days of his tenure as Rangers manager saw his CV blotted with the Ibrox club’s heaviestever defeat at home to their city rivals.
So when chairman Dave King attempts to put a positive spin on the 5-1 drubbing from a Rangers perspective, he is certainly stretching credulity to the limit.
The South Africa-based businessman insists, however, that the painful afternoon at the end of April can ultimately prove to be the making of Caixinha as a success story in Govan.
King believes it fully vindicated his decision to pay compensation to secure the release of the Portuguese coach from Qatari club Al-gharafa in March, rather than wait to recruit him upon the expiry of his contract this summer.
Having acquainted himself with the squad he inherited from Mark Warburton over the final 11 games of last season, Caixinha has subsequently embarked upon a radical overhaul of first team personnel. In King’s view, it was time and money well spent.
“We brought Pedro in early for a reason, to come in and assess his squad,” said King. “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 me for free?’ I said ‘the reason we did that is that 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 and 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 instead tried to shore it up and get a 1-1 draw or whatever, he wouldn’t have learned about the players.
“He knew what he wanted to do. He was testing the players in a competitive environment.