FORMER Scotland manager George Burley reckons Rangers’ gamble in appointing Pedro Caixinha has backfired.
Burley believes the Portuguese coach was the wrong man at the wrong time for Rangers.
And the former Hearts manager claims Tuesday’s humiliating exit at the hands of Progres Niederkorn proves his point.
The club's bosses plucked the unknown 46-year-old from his job with Qatari outfit Al-Gharafa in March and charged him with picking up the pieces after Mark Warburton’s exit.
But Burley believes they should have put their faith in someone who had a better grasp on the Scottish game.
He said: “It’s been a disappointing week for Scottish sides in Europe but the one that sticks out is the Rangers defeat to the team from Luxembourg, especially with them being part-timers.
“Rangers should have been looking to build on what they had managed over the last few years, getting back into the Premiership and stabilising.
“But they seem to have gone a step back now.
“Their old manager has left, they have brought in a foreign manager and eight or nine new players. But that’s not going to be a success overnight.
“For me it is a big gamble they have taken. The way they have done it wouldn’t have been my choice if I was looking to make a club stronger.
“I’d be looking to get somebody who knows the club, British football and the players’ mentality. Someone who knows about the youngsters coming through so that they can build on a platform.
“But Rangers have taken a different approach - bringing in a foreign manager with foreign players - and I can’t really see it taking them a step forward.
“Giving him the job is a big gamble and I don’t think they needed to take such a gamble. They could have got a safe pair of hands, someone who knew the club. Derek McInnes or Alex McLeish for example.
“They needed someone to stabilise things as everything was moving in the right direction. But with this appointment now everything is up in the air again.”
But Burley has sympathy for Caixinha, admitting the size of the task facing him would be too much for even the world’s best coaches.
“To be fair to Pedro, I think you could bring Jose Mourinho into Rangers and ask him to get instant success - but it still wouldn’t happen,” he said.
“What’s required is a big change. A change in mentality, knowing which players to keep and which to let go.
“I don’t think you can just blame Pedro, because he’s just started. It’s too early.
“But he’s been asked to do a job overnight which is just not possible because he doesn’t know the league, he doesn’t know the mentality of the local players.
“He doesn’t know the young players he needs to push on, which he will need to do, because Rangers don’t have pots of money for top-class players. They need to build.”
Rangers early exit was quickly followed by St Johnstone, who also tumbled out after losing 3-1 on aggregate to Lithuanians FK Trakai.
Some pundits have suggested the only remaining solution to the Scottish club’s continued failure on the continent is to embrace a summer season.
But Burley reckons the fix has to go much deeper than re-jigging the calendar.
He said: “The fundamental thing that needs to improve is bringing young players through. We don’t have the top quality players we used to have.
“There are a lot of ingredients needed to fix that but we need to get more youngsters playing more football.
“With the way our environment is, we don’t play in the parks so much these days or at school, so that’s something we need to replicate.”
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