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The Madness Of Pedro Caixinha

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About a week ago I wrote about a glorious TV moment, in Boardwalk Empire, when a gangster named Gyp Rosetti goes down to the beach to inspect a whiskey arrival wearing the hat of an old Civil War general. It’s an OMFG moment in the show … where your jaw literally drops as you realise that this guy is completely off his nut.

I wrote about that in the context of Pedro Caixinha and the press statements he gave before and then after the cup semi-final. Now, today, with the club still reeling from the record breaking Ibrox skelping we handed his team last week, he has given another press conference which removes all doubt that he, too, is on another world. Simply put, this guy ain’t playing with a full deck. He is absolutely barking mad.

It’s kind of thrilling to watch this. I admit it, I am fascinated.

There is a part of me that would have loved to be in the bunker in the last days of the Third Reich, watching the demented Hitler finally dip out of marginal sanity and into full-blown madness, and I’d like to think that even as I realised I was probably dead just for being there at that moment in time, and in the grip of such craziness, that I would have been able to take a detached viewpoint and simply enjoy the show, marvelling at the sheer nuttiness of it all.

Likewise, if Trump goes full-on nuts and starts a major war I like to think that I’ll be able to suspend the fear for myself and my family and the world and just take it all in, with the savage glee of George Carlin, who once said if the end of the world happened in his lifetime his only hope was that it started on the other side of the planet first and made its way across the globe slowly, just so he could sit down with some Cheetos and make the best of the entertainment.

I wonder if there are Sevco fans who feel that way watching Caixinha; terrified but oddly exhilarated at the same time.

Switching on to watch that press conference from today, I wonder how many of them feel an unanchored sense of hopelessness as the realisation dawns that their future is in the hands of guy who isn’t quite fully present and accounted for. When you are in that situation it must be tempting to get hysterical. But it must be equally enticing simply to say “To Hell with it”, abandon hope and simply “embrace the horror” as Steve Buscemi’s character puts it in Armageddon when he gives up trying to save the world and settles for watching it burn.

Today he told press men who must have been utterly incredulous that he intends to talk to all the players one on one, face to face, tomorrow and find out which of them are “men” and which aren’t. Think on that for a second; even The Record’s writers couldn’t keep it together long enough to try and make it sound better than it is; “X-Factor style interviews” is what they called these proposed chats, not even trying to hide how absurd they think all this is.

But they do appear to take seriously the idea that this is the beginning of The Great Sevco Cull of 2017, and that, in itself, is something to marvel at.

As has already been pointed out, there isn’t one player in the squad who’s contract ends when this campaign does. So unless they want to start writing cheques and paying people off, they face two choices; to tell players you’ve slated as less than men that they have a future in your team after all, or to try and flog them to other clubs.

Now, all this nuttiness is on the record now so I think you can see the problem right? It’s kind of amazing that the hacks at that conference today didn’t and that a guy like Caixinha, who’s actually meant to be pretty smart, can’t.

“Hi there, I’m an agent representing Sevco of the Scottish Premier League. We’re holding a bit of a fire-sale on footballers at the moment, and I wondered if you might be interested in purchasing some out of your vast TV money resources? Well, where can I start? There’s a range, from defenders to midfielders to strikers … well they flopped in the SPL, but don’t hold that against them … well, they’re also gutless. None could be deemed worthy of being called men. They didn’t have heart, bottle or the skills to compensate for their lack … what do you say? You wanna offer £250,000 for openers? Hello? Are you still there? Hello? Hello? Hello? ….”

Form an orderly queue gentlemen …

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