When it comes to naming a starting XI for a football match, the whole clandestine affair tends to be as cloak-and-dagger as the communal coat room at a meeting of the Govan branch of the Guild for International Espionage and Assassins. Oops, sorry, we’ve just blown their cover.

Pedro Caixinha, the Rangers, manager is clearly determined to do things his way and it appears there will be no whispers or nod-and-wink customs when it comes to dishing out inside information. Which is quite a change from the norm.

Usually when asked about team selections in the build up to a game, a variety of gaffers tend to adopt the old, garbled Colemanballs classic, “I’ve got a few irons in the fire but I’m keeping them close to my chest” kind of mentality.

Read more: Pedro Caixinha: "I'm the one who chooses the time," says Rangers manager on Kenny Miller's future

At the Rangers training centre yesterday, Caixinha performed his now customary round of hand-shakes with the attendant scribblers before performing the somewhat unusual duty of reeling off the 11 players who will start tonight’s match with Kilmarnock a day early.

“I can tell you,” he said. “It’s Wes (Foderingham), James (Tavernier), David (Bates), Danny (Wilson), Myles (Beerman), Andy (Halliday), Jason (Holt), Emerson (Hyndman), Barrie (McKay), Joe (Garner) and Martyn (Waghorn). This is the first XI that will start the game. I don’t care if they (Kilmarnock) think differently knowing our team 24 hours before we play.”

Faced with a fairly thin blue line due to a number of injuries to defensive players, Caixinha will hand debuts to 20-year-old Bates, who was plucked from Raith Rovers, and the 18-year-old Beerman, a Maltese under-21 cap who joined from Manchester City last summer.

His hand may have been forced in a sense with those depleted numbers but the Portuguese manager clearly has faith in the young ‘uns at his disposal. “I would not put a player in if I didn’t trust him or have confidence in him,” said Caixinha. “If we have trust and confidence we are able to take more risks and the players will as well.”

Caixinha is still in the process of assessing every weapon in his armoury. The fact he’s been coming into his office at five in the morning shows an enthusiasm for the task. Either that or the bacon butties in the Auchenhowie canteen are too alluring.

It remains to be seen who will be coming in and who will be heading out but Caixinha is covering all the bases. “The youth system, if we have good players in there then we need to have a look at them,” he said. ]

Read more: Pedro Caixinha: "I'm the one who chooses the time," says Rangers manager on Kenny Miller's future

“Then we have the players we already have here and have to see if they fit into a massive club like Rangers, if they can be committed and meet our demands, if they can cope with the expectations of the fans and the knowledge that we need to win all the time. We also have the local players, whom we are also assessing because this is the reality of the game here. You need to know where the Scottish players are and whether they can fit into what we have.

“Then, of course, there are the foreign players and we have been working for the last 7-10 days to assess them and get the right information which will allow us to make the correct decisions.”

After 45 minutes of last Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Motherwell, Caixinha was pushed into a trio of changes at the interval due to a variety of ailments. It’s all part of the learning process.

“We faced some different problems in my second game that we didn’t face in the first game,” said Caixinha, who enjoyed a relatively carefree 4-0 stroll in his first match against Hamilton but experienced a more robust test against the sturdy Steelmen. “That requires game intelligence and knowing what is needed in the match at that exact moment and also for us to remember what our identity and our style of play is in order to beat the problems the other team is causing us.”

The major problem for Rangers just now is that Aberdeen, the team currently occupying the second spot that Caixinha craves, are 10 points ahead of them in the league’s upper echelons.

The way the dandy Dons are playing just now, it would take the kind of reeling in job that Captain Ahab embarked on but with two games to come against the side from the Granite City, Caixinha has not given up hope.

“If we just had one game left against them, I would say it is almost impossible,” he said before going into the simple mathematics that even the fitba scribblers can understand. “If you take three points from 10, that’s seven. But six from 10 means a gap of four, so it is still possible.

“We understand that we need to win both of the games for it to be possible, so what changes is making sure we take it to four from 10. While it is still possible, why not keep the flame in that direction? I want the team to always think up the way and not a team which is playing without goals. If we can’t make it, then we try to make a bigger gap between ourselves and the team in fourth position. We must always have a team with a shine in their eyes to do something.”