Pedro Caixinha not daunted by Celtic'ss Euro millions

Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha promotes the Rangers Charity Foundation's Big Hearted Bears Day. Picture: Roddy Scott/SNS

The Parkhead side’s 5-0 drubbing of Astana in Wednesday’s play-off first leg has effectively sealed Brendan Rodgers’ team £30 million in earnings from the Champions League group campaign to follow. In a wider context, the six-in-a-row Scottish champions have put so much distance between themselves and the Ibrox club in financial terms, they have disappeared over the horizon.

Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha isn’t inclined to peer through his telescope just to get a look at how the winning half across the city are living. Affecting only a passing interest, the Portuguese didn’t even watch the events from Parkhead the other night, but does recognise the profound advantages Celtic are gaining through back-to-back appearances in European club football’s blue riband tournament.

“I watched Olympiacos against Rijeka, I didn’t watch Celtic. I just know the result,” he said. “But yes it’s a question of money and if you have more money you can invest more money.”

He refuses to be daunted by the fact that Celtic’s turnover between this season and last will be around £60m higher than that of his club.

“It’s not my concern, having more money or less money,” he said. “It’s my concern to know in which direction this football club is working and that we are all working together in the same direction. That is my only concern. When I was younger and I was living in a building and some of my neighbours had a Porsche and of course I thought one day I would like to drive a Porsche but I didn’t then care that they had one and I didn’t.

“But I know which way I am heading and today I can tell you I am having a Porsche and I can drive a Porsche. This is the way you need to go.

“Football is about quality, football is about players. If you have more money supposedly you might get better players, that’s the way it is. But you need to spend it wisely. It’s not only about budgets in football. Budgets are important but it’s not always about budgets.

“I am very happy with the team we have and the effort we are putting in together as a football club, from top to bottom. From the chairman from the board of directors, from the technical staff and of course from the players. We all work hard to get the club on the right direction.

“We know that we still need to work harder and harder and harder and that’s what we are doing. We don’t care about what the others are doing or not, we just know in which direction we are  heading and we know we are heading together in that  direction.”

Caixinha, indeed, can point to personal experience of  football’s ability to fly in the face of financial disparities. That follows from him leading Santos Laguna to a league title that money matters alone would have suggested was an impossibility. “In Mexico the budgets are more balanced but if you have 18 teams, the team I was at,  Santos Laguna, the ranking of the budget there was about 11th or 12th,” he said.

“It’s not always a question of budgets. It’s a question of how you organise a club and everyone working in the right direction and taking care of the history and tradition and culture of the club and the winning mentality that you want to create.”

That winning mentality is proving elusive for Caixinha following last week’s home loss to Hibernian. Yesterday’s rescinding of the red card shown to Ryan Jack in that tempestuous encounter spoke of Rangers in no small part being undone by poor  refereeing calls. Victory against Hearts at Ibrox tomorrow is required to prove that was the case.

Caixinha has already detected the right reaction from his players, while admitting to liking the sentiment of the Kelly Clarkson song that borrowed from Nietzsche in telling us that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

“The answer the players gave me was by working hard [this week]. I didn’t need anything else. I had to say ‘hey boys, calm down as we need to be fresh’

“The answer will come on the game on Saturday. That’s the answer we need to give when something happens  that you are not expecting and you lose a game. Let’s move forward.”