PEDRO’S ELEVEN ON THE EDGE
Boss breaks with convention and names team day before kick-off
PEDRO CAIXINHA didn’t waste any time when asked about Rangers’ line-up for tonight’s match at Kilmarnock.
He said: “I can tell you, it’s Wes, James, David, Danny, Miles, Andy, Jason, Emerson, Barrie, Joe Garner and Martyn. This is the first XI that will start the game.”
Kilmarnock have been advised ahead of tonight’s clash at Rugby Park but that doesn’t seem to interest the Ibrox boss.
This is about his team. It’s the fact they know the personnel and tactics that will be deployed to dictate the game.
It’s about mindset. Being clear to his troops events tonight will be dictated by Rangers.
Will it work? That’s yet to be discovered. We’ll have found out by around 9.30 tonight.
But having seen his team saunter through his first game against Hamilton, Motherwell’s ability to enforce their will and their ways on to Rangers during the first half at Ibrox last weekend opened the gaffer’s eyes and forced this rethink.
Caixinha didn’t like what the Steelmen were able to achieve and now he’s doing everything to ensure Lee McCulloch’s fired-up troops won’t be able to do the same tonight.
He said: “It’s a question of confidence in the players. Besides that, even if Lee knows the first XI, he will not be able to change anything about the way he plays.
“We faced some different problems in my second game that we didn’t face in the first game.
“It has to be more about one team looking to take the game to their style of play and we must follow that.
“That requires game intelligence and knowing what is needed in the match at that exact moment and also for us to remember what our identity and our style of play is in order to beat the problems the other team is causing us.
“We have had the chance to analyse the Motherwell game, like we do with all of them, and we got into that with the players.
“We expect more opponents to try to do the same as Motherwell so in order for us to have our players ready we have to face the same conditions or problems and be ready to overcome them.
“This sort of assessment, on a daily and one-to-one basis, will allow me to choose which players are going to continue with us and which ones are not.”
Caixinha is determined to get his ways across quickly. The Portuguese was inside Murray Park at 5am on Monday working towards the trip to Ayrshire after an all-day Sunday shot and joked: “I did go out for lunch out because I’d die if I spent all day here!”
But it’s clearly a dedication he’s instilled into the squad with the changed training regimes, extra working days, as well as his attention to detail.
It is obvious he is going to need new recruits to assist with his improvements at Rangers but he has also reiterated his desire to hunt for solutions from within first before branching out. Caixinha added: “It doesn’t have to be about me bringing my own players in. Things are not going like that.
“Of course I have experience at different levels of football in different places so I have a lot of contacts and knowledge about players, not only from working with them but also by following their careers.
“So I can step it like this. Youth system. If we have good players in there then we need to have a look at them. The players we already have here, if they fit into a massive club like Rangers, if they can be committed and meet our demands, if they can cope with the expectations of the fans and the knowledge that we need to win all the time.
“We also have the local players, whom we are also assessing because this is the reality of the game here. You need to know where the Scottish players are and whether they can fit into what we have.
“Then of course there are the foreign players and we have been
working for the last seven to 10 days to assess them and get the right information which will allow us to make the correct decisions. “I am a guy of character, I am a guy with a strong personality and I need to have players with those conditions as well. Otherwise it’s difficult to deal with the demands.” Caixinha has proved his point with David Bates and Myles Beerman in tonight’s line-up and the demands are the type that ensure the supporters have not given up the chase of Aberdeen for second.
The Dons may have a healthy cushion but the teams meet twice again before the campaign is over and the manager is not chucking in the towel.
Covering both issues Caixinha said: “I would not put Myles in if I didn’t trust him or have confidence in him.
“If we have trust and confidence we are able to take more risks and the players will as well. If we just had one game left against Aberdeen I would say it was almost impossible.
“But we understand we need to win both of the games for it to be possible. While it is still possible why not keep the flame in that direction?
“I want the team to always think up the way and not play without goals. If I don’t have that goal before the end of the season? I want to keep it.
“If we can’t make it then we try to make a bigger gap between ourselves and the team in fourth position. We must always have a team with a shine in their eyes to do something.”
While it is still possible why not keep the flame in that direction PEDRO CAIXINHA