Has shock decision at Ibrox led to change in policy?

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Has shock decision at Ibrox led to change in policy?

Barrie McKay. Michael O’Halloran. Andy Halliday. Clint Hill. Harry Forrester. Rob Kiernan.

These are just six of the players who found themselves on the outside looking in once Pedro Caixinha took charge. For various reasons, be it personal fall outs, disagreements, differences in philosophy or the good old ‘not rating him’, all of these guys were either ditched, sold, or loaned away.

Once Pedro had made his mind up about a player, that was it. Hill was slightly the exception, in that the veteran defender still managed to get some appearances, but he was not in his manager’s favour and one of Caixinha’s first decisions was to not offer the big ex-QPR defender a new deal.

So, as we know, up till this point – once you are out, you are out. And when Kenny Miller joined the ranks of those ditched to the youths or otherwise ‘expelled’, that was it. Game was up.

The 37-year old’s love affair with Rangers was officially over.

Except, it was not. In a drastic and seismic shift with previous policy, Kenny Miller has been restored to the first team squad. We have even seen he and Caixinha engage in entirely constructive dialogue since the mayhem began a couple of weeks ago, so if there was ever any kind of problem between the two, it is water under the bridge now.

And that really does signal a significant change for Pedro’s previous Iron Fist. This is the first time he has cast out a player then relented and brought him back.

There are so many portions to this though, and we will try to sift through them.

There is the off-chance the whole thing was a nonsense lie spouted by a certain national publication, and that Miller’s absence from the senior squad was purely form related. Miller was/is in poor form – few can argue with that, and his temperament on the pitch was suffering a little. There is every chance Caixinha was actually guilty of good management by asking the veteran striker to recharge himself in the youths and regain his focus.

We also must confirm we never, to this day, received absolute verification that Miller had indeed been cast away. Pedro never corroborated it, Miller himself said nothing, and indeed the only evidence to hand that Miller was with the youths came from the same publication. We know that publication is banned by the club, and admittedly no one ever denied the truth of the story, but nevertheless ‘you cannot believe what you read’, right?

However, if we assume it did happen, then the flip side to good management is the genuine possibility that Kenny Miller commands more respect than the manager does, and Pedro was effectively left with a situation on his hands where his authority was undermined due to his actions, and he felt forced to restore the striker. That would certainly hint that Caixinha is vulnerable, as a few sources have suggested, and by ditching Miller, he only made that worse.

As we have seen with Barry Ferguson’s latest interview with Open Goal (in which he confirms there was no fall out or bust up with PLG back in the day) you cannot assume the tabloid tales are true – we cannot know what really happened with Miller and Pedro, if anything, but we do know Miller is most definitely in contention for selection on Friday, and that is one hell of a turnaround from seven days ago.

We just wonder why…

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7 COMMENTS

  1. As you said in a previous post, Morelos hasn't scored since Kenny was dropped so maybe he's been brought back too see if that helps. Just a thought.

  2. Sounds like good management to me don't cut your nose of to spite your face + mhedia probably blew it all out of proportion anyway

  3. Its prob morethe board stepped in. It was the board that game miller his new contract and possibly with a player/coach extension that can be called on. Maybe they see him being here more long term than ped

  4. Even if they didn't have a face to face barney the general demeanor & up front attitude of Miller in many TV interviews leading up to recent "reported" activities screamed out that he was not at all impressed with the way things were going at Ibrox & as we all know when someone is digging away constantly and undermining you, rightly or wrongly, remotely is usually worse than an actual man up face to face scrap

    Theres 4 things that I can say I am relatively certain about

    1. Kenny Miller does not rate Ped, at all and cant wait to see the back of him quick enough

    2. Ped, Knows full well that Kenny miller does not rate him, at all and cant wait to see the back of him quick enough

    3.Appears to be disharmony in dressing room, primarily between Scottish/UK players and foreign players, although I must qualify that by stating that it is my belief that any divisions are made by Ped, himself and not the non UK players

    4. Dont know who, but someone has had a word in Mr Beans shell like and advised him to bite the bullet on this one as he most likely wouldn't survive ramifications of showing Miller the door, he just got away with it re- letting McKay go for 30 bob but has no credibility left at all to throw his weight about recklessly any more

    I get absolutely no pleasure in saying it but I bet Tommy Wright is much more confident and looking forward to Friday nights clash a hell of a lot more than Ped, is

    I WONDER WHY???????

    WATP

  5. It was because it was known Kenny would be in the papers in the coming days regarding the rumpus in a zbothwepp resturant

  6. TBH I think whatever words were exchanged that led to KM being sent to the youth squad doesn't matter, cos it looks like KM has taken his punishment and made his peace with his boss. Unlike ohalloran who suffered the same fate but acted unprofessionally and served as a lesson to others how not to behave cos he not only never kicked a ball for us but never even trained with the first team. KM overstepped the mark(wether we agree wi who's right and wrong) there's only one boss and can only ever be one boss. All I can say is well done KM and welcome back pal. A lesson learned for a future manager to be. WATP.

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