Yesterday, I heard a bizarre story, which Phil, I believe, had already mentioned in one of his articles; it was about a group of current Sevco players who have set up a private Whatsapp account for those who were at the club last season.
Earlier in the week I wrote that Caixinha’s plan to rebuild the team had been accelerated in part because he had no choice.
Because he had already definitively lost the Sevco dressing room of last season.
That is a fact, and this is just another piece of evidence that it’s the case. Caixinha’s ideas have not gone over at Ibrox, and it’s going to be damaging, especially as he’s been unable to oversee a clear out of the players who don’t trust him.
Sevco has brought in eight players, but none has ever played in the SPL and there will be a tough adjustment period for all of them. If they don’t adapt or if they just aren’t good enough – don’t rule that out, not at all – he will be forced back to the players who were already at the club.
Good luck getting them to play for him after he declared them sub-par.
It’s pretty clear that the “senior member of the squad” who set up this little closed communication network is making plans for the bursting of the bubble. It’s the embryonic stages of an organised resistance to Caixinha, his ideas and his new players and it doesn’t take a genius to see Kenny Miller at the centre of all this, if not the organiser then certainly a key part of it.
Miller has already given his verdict on the new signings; they had to be made to move the club forward, but he would have preferred a more British flavour to them.
He clearly realises what I said earlier in the week; Pedro is assembling his own Praetorian Guard at Ibrox, people he trusts rather than the odd bunch who look at him like he’s someone who just farted in a chapel. Miller knows he means to cut the old dressing room clique down to size, and that means his own position at the club is precarious.
And he had such grand designs too.
The Whatsapp revolt is not new. Labour MP’s going up against the Corbyn juggernaut organised themselves the same way, and a group of Tory MP’s is believed to be plotting against May with the same technology. It does not auger well that the Ibrox dressing room is now divided not just against the manager but against itself.
If stories about the off-field antics of the likes of Pena are true – the media is going out of its way not to write them, but the Mexican media is full of interesting stuff if you want to look for it – that’s only going to get worse.
Things at Ibrox are never as rosy as the picture painted in the media and by their serial liar chairman, who’s bullish (the correct word? Yes the other just sounds similar) comments to the media over the last few days are worth an article on their own – so more of that later.
Caixinha’s guys better hit the ground running.
There’s trouble in the air already, and the season hasn’t even kicked off yet.