Pedro Caixinha was originally going to agree to be Rangers manager last week. Then, when it became clear that timeframe wasn’t happening, the Portuguese coach was going to take over at Ibrox on Monday. When a Monday takeover became an impossibility, Caixinha was set to arrive in Glasgow on Tuesday morning.
Now on Tuesday afternoon the latest reported arrival time for Caixinha is Wednesday. That would see him take charge of hat-trick hero Joe Garner and the rest of the Rangers squad ahead of the match against Celtic. Caixinha is fond of technical footballers and may be able to get a better tune out of Jon Toral, but he’s probably not going to have time to do anything before Sunday’s match.
Caixinha returned to training on Sunday with his squad and they’ll continue until Thursday 9th March, at which point the players will have 10 days off without training. Something of a mini-break for Al-Gharafa and an opportune time to change manager.
Al-Gharafa may well believe that there’s no need for things to change earlier, and they hold the cards rather than their manager. The idea of Caixinha paying an amount direct out of his own pocket to Al-Gharafa to enable a Rangers move doesn’t really hold up, this will be more about pride than money and the manager hasn’t exactly been an amazing success.
Last week Al-Gharafa denied that anything was happening, issuing a statement which said: ‘Pedro Caixinha denied the existence of negotiations with him to take over the responsibility of training the team Glasgow Rangers, stressing that he has a contract with Al-Gharafa and there’s no truth at all to it.’
It would be unlikely if the whole Caixinha to Rangers thing was a bluff from someone, it’s too unexpected to dream up. But there’d be no surprise if Al-Gharafa are making sure they’re treated with the upmost respect, and therefore delaying a Glasgow arrival.
