IT’S A HARD KNOCK LIFE
CAIXINHA IS BACKING HIS FOREIGN IMPORTS TO SURVIVE AND THRIVE ON THE UNCOMPROMISING SCOTTISH FOOTBALL BATTLEGROUND
PEDRO Caixinha’s transfer dealings this summer included some gambles, a couple of sure things and a little touch of the exotic.
If the lesser-spotted Dalcio represented a roll of the dice, Bruno Alves and Graham Dorrans had the look of safe bets. The Mexican pairing, Carlos Pena and Eduardo Herrera, were the names certain to quicken the pulses of the Light Blue legions.
Signed for a combined fee of £3.7million from Chivas Guadalajara and Pumas respectively, the pair were parachuted into an entirely different environment from the ones to which they were accustomed with big expectations.
Given the challenges they faced in adapting to their new surroundings, a slow start to life at Rangers was not entirely unexpected.
In Pena’s case, there has yet to be a sighting on him in three competitive outings.
Herrera has fared marginally better — a brief run-out in Luxembourg against Progres Niederkorn followed by 83 minutes against Motherwell — although it’s fair to say he didn’t light up either occasion.
Caixinha, though, remains completely untroubled by the rather modest bang the club has had for its not inconsiderable bucks thus far.
Pena’s assimilation to first-team duties, the Portuguese sincerely believes, is only a question of fitness and time.
As for Herrera, Caixinha’s fervent hope is that ongoing exposure to the kind of rough and tumble he endured in the weekend victory at Fir Park will be the making of him.
‘He just showed me the medals from the war,’ Caixinha said of the physically imposing striker. ‘He just needs to get used to it — that is all. That is the reality. We just need to know how to deal with it.
‘They (opponents) have already started watching him and have looked to him at Sheffield. In the Motherwell game, he was marked very aggressively.
‘If you saw, for example, only the last elbow that Louis Moult applied on the game, which resulted in a penalty and his first yellow card, he used it three times in the match.
‘I am not criticising at all because that is not my job. But he received too many punishments from the defenders and it was like a welcome card for him to understand what is going to happen from now on in Scottish football.
‘He is going to act as our target player and he is going to do brilliant to receive the ball, to deliver on the wide, to deliver on the second waves and also to score goals.
‘He is going to do it. With Pena, he is going to do a specific programme and he needs a bit more time to adapt, to get the rhythm and to be the Pena that we know. When you know the Pena that we know then everybody is going to be happy. We need to give him time and be patient, but, all the time, give him all the confidence.
‘It is about rhythm. As I told you previously, this game is about time and space and he needs to understand what time and space he is going to have in this game at a Scottish level.’
For all its shortcomings, the annals of Scottish football are brimming with redoubtable players who, for one reason or another, failed to cut the mustard. Many find the climate simply too harsh. Others cannot adapt to the breakneck speed of the game. Caixinha himself concedes that all the DVDs in the world did not do justice to the physicality he has seen at first hand. You suspect that only once Herrera and Pena acquaint themselves with that fact will they truly thrive. ‘It’s definitely much more than I was expecting,’ the manager added. ‘When I was here, for example, on the coaches’ courses to take my badges, I understood them to be really tactically orientated. ‘For me, tactics should be dominant, but it looks like, in the real world, that physicality is the main content of the majority of the Scottish teams. I’m not against or for. It’s just a different way to see the game.
‘For me, the most important thing is about decisions, and the decisions are tactical and not physical. You need to be fit to play a football match.
‘You have to understand the physicality that you have is different from other teams because you play differently. That’s the way it is.’
Herrera may anticipate some more minutes to get him up to speed in tonight’s Betfred Cup tie with Dunfermline.
For those, like him, whose bread and butter is to put the ball in the back of the net, a barren start to life at a new club can begin to prey on the mind.
Caixinha, though, feels the worst thing the Mexican can do is become fixated about scoring his first goal in Light Blue. ‘Sometimes, the strikers live for goals,’ he added. ‘But the question is how you deal with your expectations.
‘If you are too focused on just score, just score, just score, maybe the goals are not going to come.
‘If you take it calm and you keep working in that direction, you know sooner or later that the goal will come.’
For Ryan Jack, a winner of the League Cup with Aberdeen in 2014, delivering Rangers’ first major trophy in six years in November would go a long way to atoning for the nightmare of being knocked out of the Europa League by Niederkorn.
‘The expectation on that was obviously massive to get through,’ the midfielder said. ‘So to go out so quickly was really disappointing.
‘I think it’s a good idea we have the cup final in November. If you have a good cup run, you could have a winner’s medal in your pocket before Christmas.’