John Brown: Pedro Caixinha needs to learn from Graeme Murty

Former Rangers defender John Brown has urged Pedro Caixinha to change his tactics for Saturday's match with Celtic. Picture: John Devlin

The nine-in-a-row legend is also worried that, with so many debutants in the team, the new boys won’t know what’s hit them when they face Celtic at Ibrox on Saturday. Brown even believes Brendan Rodgers’ side could go whole season unbeaten for the second season running.

Rangers were hammered 5-1 twice last season, managing just one point in four league meetings while also losing to Celtic in the Betfred and Scottish Cup semi-finals.

Brown is praying that Caixinha has learned the painful lesson that he simply cannot hope to try to take on Celtic at their own game.

Brown said: “If Rangers try to go toe to toe with Celtic, there will only be one winner. You have to be cute with your tactics and how you set up. If you want to try to play free-flowing football, Celtic will beat you.

“Celtic’s strength is in the wide areas. They’ve got pace and ability to beat a man and get a delivery in. You just have to see how Kieran Tierney and Scott Sinclair link on that left side and, whoever they’ve got on the right, it’s going to be a problem. If you don’t address it, they will hurt you.

“Graeme Murty got it right when he was in temporary charge when he got a draw at Parkhead. He knew the strengths of the Celtic team and he cancelled them out and Rangers could have nicked it at the death, too.

“So, that was a fantastic performance from the team to come out with a point when everyone had written them off.

“Pedro didn’t use the same tactics in the following league game, but, hopefully, he has learned from what happened at the end of last season and puts it to good use.”

Rangers could have eight or nine new players in their starting line-up and Brown said: “It will be interesting to see how the new players react. Some of them could freeze.You are needing guys like Kenny Miller to impress upon them what lies ahead because they won’t have experienced anything like it. It’s the concentration part of it for me. They have to be focused for 90 minutes because, if you switch off against Celtic, they’ll beat you.

“They were undefeated  last season and there is a strong case for that to happen again this season.”