Aaaah Pedro. What a man.
Last night, it was revealed that he has told his players to approach tonight’s game as if it was the final of the Europa League. Tonight’s game, let’s not forget, is against the team which finished in fourth place in the league of Luxembourg last season.
He clearly knows what the rest of us do; the early rounds are as close to the final as they’ll get with this team.
This is, without a doubt, one of the most clear-cut examples of this guy’s weakness that you are likely to hear of. He is staggeringly out of his depth here, and I think deep down he must know it. This is why he reverses himself on so many key decisions.
Pedro Caixinha talks big, but he does not have the stones to back up his words.
This is a guy living in fear, at a club in denial of that.
All the little plots and schemes of the last few weeks have one thing in common; they are reactive moves rather than proactive ones. Banning green boots is an attempt to instil some kind of team spirit, to give it some kind of identity. You don’t need to do that at a club unless it lacks one. The same applies to daubing the sectarian slogan on the wall. This is an attempt to inject some passion into your team. Why bother, unless your team has none?
These are all examples of bluff, but ask any poker player and he’ll tell you; if you’re holding four aces you’ve got no need to bluff. Your only worry is that you appear too strong and scaring away the opposition before you can make a killing.
This guy would be a dreadful player. All that braggadocio is transparently fake. The laying down the law to his players, like a record player on a constant loop, is a mark of weakness and not strength at all. As someone smarter than me once said, “Any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king.” The title alone isn’t enough. Respect is earned. You can’t scare people into it. Caixinha has done everything wrong already, and he’s making it worse.
Imagine we’re playing Alloa in the cup.
Do you think Brendan would tell his players “play like it’s the final”? Of course not. He’d tell us to do a professional job and take another step towards reaching the final. It’s the Alloa manager who would be telling his players to treat the game like the biggest of their careers, to leave it all out on the field.
When you have to resort to that, in a game like this, you’re in trouble.
And the trouble is swirling around Sevco right now like a dust cloud.
It doesn’t get better from here.
Except for the rest of us.
And ice cream salesman.