Two weeks have now passed since the Glasgow derby.
The rapturous celebrations of our Govan neighbours have finally calmed down.
Now the era of Caxinha, Caixhena, Caixhana … lets call him Pedro … has begun.
He got off to a great start with a 4-0 trouncing of serial whipping boys Hamilton Accies a a week ago on Saturday.
Did you really expect anything less?
I mean he does apparently have the best squad of players in the country playing for the biggest club, right? Although, with that, how they got 33 points behind Celtic in the league and sold 10 thousand less season tickets is anybody’s guess.
Anyway he’s got off to the right foot with the light blue masses. They lap up hubris and bullshit.
Pedro is the man and that’s all there is to it. The CV says it all.
This is the guy who led Al-Gharafa to the lofty heights of 9th in the Qatar Stars League last season. The last time he managed in Europe he guided União Leiria to 10th in the Portuguese Primeira Liga (that’s 10th out of 16 ) and Nacional to 8th in the same league the following season. There’s 14 in the Qatari Stars League by the way.
So we know he has the stomach for a relegation battle anyway.
He also had unparalleled successes in Mexico with Santos Laguna. Who are they you might ask? Well I’m not quite sure but I do know their away kit for this season bears an uncanny resemblance to Celtic’s old bumble bee away strip. So that’s that sorted.
Pedro was apparently first choice.
But then we were also told that the director of football at Ibrox was the priority and that, that role would be appointed first.
Ross Wilson flatly saying no kicked that into touch though.
This somewhat undermined the apparent ‘vision’ that chief executive Stewart Roberston laid out when he claimed the necessity for such a role was so that no matter who the head coach was, the footballing ‘vision’ wouldn’t be eroded or changed. You’d think then it would be of vital importance that said director of football would be involved in the selection process of the head coach but apparently not.
The ‘vision’ has changed.
No Pedro will be bestowing his ‘vision’ on the training pitch and then who ever comes in as director of football will have to presumably change their ‘vision’ to be in line with this or wait until Pedro is fired before putting their own into action.
Confusing times.
Dave King jetted in for lunch with Pedro and cleared all of the confusion up with at typically bombastic, scattergun series of interviews with his hand-picked pals in the SMSM who had been waiting with bated breath.
I love it when King does this.
He literally sits completely disinterested in South Africa with not a care in the world until he finally decides to acknowledge his burgeoning e-mail and voicemail inbox not to mention the literally hundreds of unacknowledged whatsapp messages and texts from the likes of Keith Jackson et al.
It’s as if he says to himself, ‘Oh yeah. That football thing I own …’
Once he’s confirmed that there are no golf trips, wine tours or court appearances planned for the following week he says ‘Sod it. Why not?’ and books a first class flight back to Glasgow all charged directly to Edmunston Drive.
He no doubt drops a quick text to his resident sycophant Richard Wilson saying ‘I’ll take over from here.’
He’ll then go on to completely undermine Wilson’s claims that King has no interest in being a hands on owner by unashamedly dominating the back pages for the length of his stay.
King claims he’ll sue Mark Warburton, the onetime ‘Magic Hat’ darling of the Ibrox denizens who’s now been demoted to merely a necessary ladder on the ‘journey’ in order to get them back up. A total 180 has occurred on that narrative.
How you can sue a guy you fired and who’s suing you I don’t know but that’s what Dave said.
In fact going back to 180’s Dave also says he’ll renegotiate a sensational deal with Mike Ashley to get rid of those pesky onerous contracts and return full marketing and merchandise control to Ibrox. That must have raised some eyebrows down Shirebrook way.
Either that or all out laughter.
King says it will of course be difficult because Ashley doesn’t like losing.
I’d imagine that point is even more pertinent because he’s currently winning and then some.
He has the Blue Room banged to rights until 2020 and they know it.
King suddenly referring to him as ‘Mike’ won’t change that.
The only thing that will is spondulix and lots of it. We know King doesn’t have much of that. But he knows a man who does.
Douglas Park must be getting that sinking feeling in his stomach again.
It’s the one he always gets when he sees Dave King’s name come up on his phone.
Thank God he has the ample waist for it.
And the beat goes on.
Paul Cassidy is a blogger and Celtic fan who loves it when Dodgy Dave King pops over to Scotland ….