Pedro Caixinha – or Brother Pedro as I’ll be calling him for now, since he’s such a huge fan of our club and our culture and in 2015 expressed his clear wish that we keep on winning leagues, never realising he might get to play a very active role in us achieving that goal – hasn’t even signed on the dotted line at Sevco yet and already the cast of the Muppet Show is giving him advice. And as per usual it’s moronic.
What’s it come down to? Spend money. Buy players.
The opening salvo has been launched by none other than McCoist, who’s team building plan was so haphazard and ridiculous that it led to Warburton having to apply one that was equally haphazard and ridiculous to fix it.
These people never learn.
McCoist signed over 30 players in three years; Warburton was getting close to that number himself.
I understand that modern football seems ruled by the vagaries of the transfer market; it might be the worst thing about the window and the deadline breaking deals, much worse even than the way the EPL and its obsession with these box office moves has pushed prices up. In the process football management has become sort of demystified; guys like McCoist and Warburton would have you think the whole gig was easy, that by spending money you can fix everything.
What happens, of course, is that you fix nothing. You store up long term problems for other people. As McCoist’s idiotic splurge led to Warburton’s own lunacy so too has disastrous effort impacted on the resources this guy will have and how he’ll have to work.
Sevco has no money to spend. That’s the hard truth of it, and everyone is fully aware of that.
The new manager will be too. They are skint, and one of the reasons he’s been brought in is because he was available cheap and was willing to work on a shoestring, so in the first place giving him a huge budget is a fantasy prospect for openers.
Secondly, who’s he going to sign? This guy hasn’t managed in Europe for five years okay? Five years. He’s been in South America and over in Doha. There, he’s been able to sign players work-permit free. He has not dealt in the European market in all that time, if at all. I have no idea what his budget was like at other clubs. His knowledge of Portugal will be current – maybe – but the wider market in Europe has him five years behind the times.
Is he aware that Sevco employs exactly one scout? Does he know how to build a team out of UK based players, because their network only covers that general area. The problems this guy will have, from Day 1, are going to mount up and up and up.
These are the reasons Sevco wanted to bring in a Director of Football. They may or may not do that, but the idea that he will pick the players and the manager will just make a squad out of them is for the birds. If they were going to run things that way they didn’t need an unknown continental boss for that; they could have brought in McLeish or McInnes, if the Aberdeen boss was willing to come. Which no-one knows for sure.
All in all, this is a shambles, an appointment that makes no sense in a system that is a farce before it’s even properly been set up.
Appointing the manager before the DoF and having the two appointments separate from each other is madness, it’s tempting fate in a way that’s honestly staggering. Two guys who’ve never met, who don’t know each other at all, who have no clue whether the personal chemistry will work, and one being subservient to the other on almost every issue … the press has gone out of its way to tell us Caixinha is a guy who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, who is argumentative and abrasive … just the sort of person you need in charge of one half of the football operation, being told what to do by a perfect stranger in the other half.
This has “disaster” written all over it.
And into the mix comes McCoist, telling the guy to “Spend, spend, spend!” like Posh Spice on cocaine. He will get no shortage of advice like that over the next week or two, and every move he makes will be scrutinised like he’s never imagined.
This guy is not a Real Rangers Man, and he retains some affection for the Hoops, so I can feel a degree of sympathy for him as he waits to take the reigns at the most dysfunctional football club in the world. He is not ready for this; only one of their own could possibly be, and that’s where, perhaps, their fans have a point about wanting one.
The media and a febrile section of their support has already started building this guy up way beyond what is reasonable or even rational. Even if he were not facing Brendan Rodgers and this rampant Celtic team this would be a lethal combination.
I do not wish him well. Obviously. But because of who he is and what his background is I wish him only that it’s over quickly, and not dragged out and painful. A few short, sharp, shocks to convince people the fit doesn’t work and he can go back to Portugal or South America to lick his wounds.
The ride is going to be bumpy.
When the fall starts he’ll hit terminal velocity pretty quick, I reckon.
We’re in for a summer of fun, my friends.