Rogic: Caixinha is feeling the heat
● Rodgers would not confront opponent like Gers boss did, says Celtic midfielder
Tom Rogic believes Pedro Caixinha’s touchline confrontation with Scott Brown at Ibrox was evidence of the daunting state of affairs facing the Rangers manager as he tries to close the gulf between his side and Celtic.
Caixinha went head-to-head with Celtic captain Brown at half-time of Saturday’s first Old Firm game of the campaign to protest at what he claimed was a deliberate elbow in the face of his striker Alfredo Morelos from the midfielder. Rogic, who scored the first goal in Celtic’s ultimately comfortable 2-0 win, has questioned Caixinha’s conduct and insisted the Scottish champions’ own manager, Brendan Rodgers, would never indulge in that type of behaviour.
The Australian international midfielder also offered a robust defence of Brown’s part in proceedings on a day which saw Celtic open up an eight-point gap between themselves and Rangers in the Scottish Premiership after just seven rounds of fixtures.
“That’s up to him,” said Rogic when asked about Caixinha’s face-off with Brown. “You certainly wouldn’t see our manager getting involved in anything like that. I think that maybe says a little bit about their [Rangers’] situation and where they are.
“I don’t know what the Rangers manager saw. That’s not really my place to comment. But Scott’s a good leader. I don’t think [he crosses the line sometimes].
“He is massive for us. You have your captain leading by example in almost all of our matches. He seems to win every 50-50 he goes into. He puts himself about for tackles and, when the ball comes to him, he is calm and composed. He gets us set up on the right foot. He’s been at this club for years now. He is a leader who leads by example.
“He has been an exceptional player for a number of years now. He will be one that, when he stops playing, people will look back and see him as a real legend of the club.
“We are fortunate to have a captain like him to play under. It makes our job easier.
“He’s been at the club since day one for me. He’s one of the few who are still here since I joined. He doesn’t always have to say something to you, he just leads by example. It rubs off on his team-mates.”
Rogic was reluctant to offer an opinion when asked whether Caixinha’s new-look Rangers side were any closer to being able to provide a greater challenge to Celtic’s dominance this season.
“That is for other people to judge,” he said. “We just focus on ourselves. But I think that is pretty evident. It speaks for itself.
“I don’t know how Rangers compare to last season. They have brought in a lot of players, but for us it is not too important to worry about the players they have brought in. We just focus on ourselves.
“We feel as if we are getting better game after game and improving in all areas of the park. That is the most important thing. If we can keep doing that we will keep winning.”
Whatever form of measurement Dave King uses to assess the health of his investments, he is unlikely to find much encouragement in the early returns from Pedro Caixinha’s wellfunded revamp of the Rangers squad.
King presumably watched Saturday’s Old Firm encounter unfold on Rangers TV in his Johannesburg home. It would not have been comfortable viewing for the South Africa-based businessman.
If the final scoreline was more respectable than the record 5-1 defeat Rangers suffered on Celtic’s previous visit to Ibrox in April, the gap in quality between the teams was every bit as obvious. Brendan Rodgers’ side are fitter, faster and both technically and tacticallysuperiorina“rivalry”which now barely merits the description.
While Rodgers eyes the broader horizons of a Champions League challenge which takes his team to Brussels on Wednesday for a crucial fixture against Anderlecht, Caixinha is floundering in his efforts to simply restore the competitive credibility at domestic level which is the minimum requirement for him this season.
Rangers have now dropped ten points from their first seven matches of the Premiership campaign. It is a marginal improvement from their start to life back in the top flight last season under Mark Warburton, when they dropped 12 points over the same period, but hardly constitutes the kind of progress King would have envisaged when he gave Caixinha carte blanche to overhaul his playing personnel in the summer.
Six of his 11 new signings started Saturday’s match, with two more appearing from the bench, but it was difficult to detect any significant improvement. While Ryan Jack and Graham Dorrans at least added some steel in the midfield battle, especially during the goalless first half, there was a glaring lack of creativity in that department for Rangers.
It is a quality which is supposed to be provided by Carlos Pena, Caixinha’s most expensive recruit, but the Mexican was a wretchedly ineffective performer on his first Premiership start for the Ibrox men. The 27-yearold is toiling badly to get up to speed with Scottish football and has the look of someone who has found himself in very much the wrong movie.
As the afternoon progressed, the crucial midfield battle became another mismatch as Celtic captain Scott Brown set the tempo and dictated the pattern of play for the champions. Their unbeaten domestic run under Rodgers is now stretched to 57 games and they are in no mood to relinquish their remarkably consistent dominance any time soon.
“We feel like we are going to win every game we go into,” said Tom Rogic, scorer of Celtic’s first goal five minutes into the second half when he benefited from Rangers’ failure to clear a Leigh Griffiths corner and swept a left-foot shot high beyond Wes Foderingham.
“We have that mindset. We are not too focused on the opposition going into the game, it’s important just to focus on ourselves. That’s what we 3 Twirling a supporter’s scarf above his head, Leigh Griffiths celebrates his 65th-minute goal. did and that’s what gives us the confidence to keep going game after game and to keep winning. That’s why we’re successful, that’s why we keep going game after game unbeaten.
“We felt good out there. Our performance was good. From start to finish, we felt pretty comfortable in the match. We possibly could have had a few more goals.”
Rangers can point to a couple of key moments which, perhaps, had the potential to change the course of the game. Jozo Simunovic’s clumsy 13thminute challenge on Alfredo Morelos prompted a credible claim for a penalty which was rejected by referee Craig Thomson, thenmoreloswasdenied an equaliser for Rangers when his closerange header was kept out by Craig Gordon’s instinctive save.
But there was always a sense that Celtic had morethanenough in the tank to do whatever was required to win.
The three points were effectively wrapped up when Griffiths raced on to Patrick Roberts’ neat reverse pass and found space behind 19-year-old Ross Mccrorie – who overall had a performance he can be proud of as central defensive deputy for the injured Bruno Alves – to drill a low shot past Foderingham. “We are bitterly disappointed,” said Dorrans, Rangers’ captain for the day in the absence of Lee Wallace. “In the first half, I thought we matched Celtic. Celtic had a lot of the ball without hurting us too much. They had a few early chances but we stayed in the game. We came out second half and they scored within five minutes which knocks us a little bit, but we got back in the game and pushed on. We had a good chance from Alfredo. Craig Gordon made a good save – with a bit of luck that goes in and the game changes. But it didn’t and they went on to get the second goal which kills us a little bit.
“Goals change games. If we had got the first goal or the equaliser we would have grown into it a little bit more. With a little bit of luck it might have done. We just need to stick together and move on.
“It’s three points dropped for us, but we have another game coming up at Hamilton on Friday. We find ourselves in this situation at the moment which is not ideal, but we need to stick together and we need to show what it means to us.
“Listen, it’s going to be tough [to get closer to Celtic]. We have got a number of new players and we are just working each other out at the minute. But there is good ability here, it’s a strong squad we’ve got. On Friday night, hopefully we can go out and get a win and start to build a bit of momentum again.”