PEDRO Caixinha has admitted he felt “ashamed” in the wake of the 2-0 loss his Rangers side suffered at the hands of Celtic in the William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden on Sunday.
Caixinha attended the Ibrox club’s annual Player of the Year dinner along with his squad after his debut in the Glasgow derby match had ended in defeat.
However, the Portuguese coach, whose side take on their city rivals for the sixth time this season in a Ladbrokes Premiership match at home on Saturday, has promised there will be a stark improvement.
“We didn’t have the passion that this club is giving to us,” he told Rangers TV. “After the match we went to the Player of the Year dinner and I was feeling ashamed because I couldn’t give the fans the same passion as I was receiving there.
“We prepare the team to be aggressive and we want the team to be aggressive in a good way for the whole game, you can’t even have 45 seconds where you are not focussed.
“You have small throw in that maybe means nothing, but for you to get the momentum in the game you can’t allow the other team into the game. Maybe the doubts are coming in moments like that and that is definitely what I don’t want.”
Caixinha stressed that he had spent the week attempting to identify what went wrong in the semi-final and inject greater urgency into his side’s play – both in defence and in attack – to ensure there is an improved performance against Brendan Rodgers’s team this weekend.
“I used the day off on Monday to look at the game and we analysed the game on Tuesday with the players,” he said. “We came to the conclusion that normally we have two ways of seeing one plan.
“If it is a bad plan and everybody believes in it and tries to execute it then maybe it can become a good plan. When it is a brilliant plan, but you don’t execute it then you will never know it so what we expect now is to have a good plan with good execution. We have to have coordination about the ideas so everybody acts at the same time in the same direction.”
Caixinha added: “We have a principle and this week I am going to work on it a lot – we call it the 10 second principle. If you start with the ball or your opponents start with it then you need to create some sort of danger within the 10 seconds.
“The ball must be closer to the opponent’s goal or if the ball starts with the opponent then you must recover the ball within the 10 seconds. Did you see that in the last match? I don’t think so.”
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