Pedro Caixinha should be Rangers manager by now. At one point last week it was insinuated Caixinha would be in Glasgow imminently, eager to take the Rangers job and get to work quickly.
Caixinha was said to be keen to get to work ahead of the Celtic match next Sunday, and prepare the team for their trip to Celtic Park. As it stands, even if the deal was announced today, Caixinha wouldn’t be able to really start preparing for the match against Brendan Rodgers’ men for a couple of days.
Graeme Murty is still the man in power seat at Rangers and oversaw the 6-0 demolition of Hamilton at the weekend, with Joe Garner getting himself a hat-trick.
Every day that goes by strips time from the run up to the Celtic match, and in Qatar they’ve been steadfast that it’s not happening at all. Al-Gharafa released a statement last week saying: ‘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.’
That may well be bluster from the Qatari club and they’ve not added to it since.
According to the club’s website, Caixinha took training on Sunday and Al-Gharafa are preparing for a March 24th friendly. Perhaps interestingly, the coach has decided to give his players a ten day rest period. Starting on March 9th, that could be an opportune time for change.
If Rangers did have to wait until the 9th then it would likely be wiser for Caixinha to wait until after the Celtic match to start work at Rangers. The last thing he needs is to be thrown into a situation where he doesn’t know his own players at all and gets to see them demolished by Moussa Dembele, Scott Sinclair and co.
