John Brown fears that Pedro Caixinha is leading Sevco into another derby day drubbing.
The current Ibrox boss seems to operate in a bubble of his own where all of his madcap ideas are the ideas are the only ones that matter.
Brown became an Ibrox Ambassador following Dave King’s regime change in March 2015 and is normally upbeat about most matters and claimed that Celtic panicked into bringing in Brendan Rodgers because ‘Rangers are coming’.
The reality of Celtic’s 5-1 win at Ibrox last season cut into the superiority complex of the club with the pain still fresh.
With the hoops looking just as strong domestically there is fear in the air over Ibrox with the words of Brown bound to add to the pressure on Caixinha not to suffer yet another humbling.
“If Rangers try to go toe to toe with Celtic there will only be one winner,” he warned in The Sun. “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.
“We had it my day with players like Mark Walters, Trevor Steven and Brian Laudrup — guys that could cut defences open.
“When I was scouting European opponents for Walter Smith I’d come back and would tell him, for example, that all the danger came from right winger and he would make plans to cancel that out.
“Though we may not be as strong going forward on that side, we eliminated a threat.
“Maybe that’s what Pedro needs to look at — you just have to see how Kieran Tierney and Scott Sinclair link on the left 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 change when he got a draw at Parkhead.
“He knew the strengths of the Celtic team and he cancelled them out and they 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 wrote them off.
“Hopefully Pedro has learned from what happened at the end of last season and puts it to good use.”
The timing of Brown’s comments will be a worry for Caixinha who seems to have less and less support from within the marble staircase of unsurpassed dignity.
Falling eight points behind the league leaders after seven matches will be a tough one to spin to the gullible- if it involves another heavy defeat the fifth best coach in Qatar will almost certainly be looking out his passport.
NB Ten months ago Brown told the Daily Record: “I don’t worry about 10 in a row. Can you hold your breath for four years? It’s a long time, a lot of things can change.
“Rangers will be a force again next season and will be a hell of a lot stronger.
“The manager is getting to grips with what is required for the Premiership. It’s about winning games.
