PEDRO Caixinha knew his days at Rangers were numbered from early on in his reign.

Keen to establish a new, progressive, European-style culture at the club, the Portuguese coach, who was sacked on Thursday, met with resistance almost from the start, with his decision to truncate the summer holiday period treated with disdain.

It brought echoes of the Paul Le Guen era which ended in similarly ignominious circumstances in 2007, the French coach lasting even less time in the manager’s job than Caixinha. Where a sour relationship with his captain Barry Ferguson was the undoing of Le Guen, a three-time Le Championnat winner as head coach of Lyon, Caixinha’s dealings with Kenny Miller were equally acrimonious.

With his “Scottish” players, led by Miller, refusing to adapt to his training methods or accept the demands the Portuguese coach was making on his players, Caixinha found himself trying to coach a squad that was riven down the middle. When he was forced to confront Miller about his alleged leaking of dressing-room information, it was the final straw. Yet, while Miller might have been banished from the kingdom, there remained a number of subjects who were loyal to the most senior player in the squad, rather than their manager.

Such was the level of mutual distrust between the feuding sides, it is believed those in Caixinha’s camp were openly questioning whether there was an ulterior motive behind the circumstances which led to Ryan Jack’s three red cards in 13 games.

But this was about more than one man’s shortcomings. There was a clear failure in leadership at the top. Stewart Robertson, the managing director, Andrew Dickson, head of football administration, and director Graeme Park, are all believed to have been in favour of Caixinha’s appointment, but there was a split with others, such as Paul Murray and John Gilligan, against it. In the early days of the Caixinha tenure, he was under the impression that he would be in charge of coaching but it soon became clear, as the club struggled to find a director of football to match their budget, that he would be responsible for player recruitment, too.

It is the “institutional failure” that Rangers director Alastair Johnston was referring to in the aftermath of Caixinha’s departure. Tellingly, though, Johnston said he believed the squad was “better than people think and perhaps a new management team will get more out of them”.

“The decision was obviously something that was under consideration for a while, we are not deaf and blind,” Johnston said. “I think the events of the last couple of weeks demonstrated institutional failure, if you will. It was a systemic problem and not just one we thought could be corrected easily with the current personnel.”

That squad was, in large part, assembled by Caixinha. There is no denying he was deserving of a significant portion of blame, too.

His increasingly bizarre public pronouncements – whether talking about the omerta of trips to Vegas or caravans and dogs – owed much to a solid yet flawed grasp of the English language and a failure to gauge properly how the press, his employers, his players and the Rangers supporters construed his comments. With half a squad weighted against him, his position was untenable.

His removal leaves a sizeable tranche of players at Rangers who are now questioning their own futures. Those who were at Murray Park on Friday noted a lighter mood around the place and Miller has been welcomed back into the fold. But not everyone will be happy with that decision, certainly not those who feel Caixinha was failed by players who showed little or no enthusiasm to adapt to his methods.

Caixinha’s exit again raises the hoary argument about the attitudes of Scottish players and their ability to change, to embrace new ideas and cultures. Player power is part and parcel of the modern game and it can take many different forms. There is outright dissent, as displayed at Rangers, which infects all who are exposed to it and there is the insidious variety – where gradual decline comes when players stop short of mutiny but nevertheless stop responding to instruction, as appeared to happen at Celtic under Ronny Deila.

The Norwegian, though, still managed to secure two league titles and so Celtic persisted with their experiment before ushering in the Brendan Rodgers era. That move now looks inspired and has merely compounded Rangers’ failure to improve on the failed Mark Warburton appointment with a more dubious dabble with the chemistry set in appointing Caixinha.

No doubt Caixinha will, in the days ahead, reflect on the aforementioned institutional failures expressed by Johnston. In that respect, he shares a similarity with his predecessor Warburton who was similarly hung out to dry by his employers.

The Rangers board must hold up a collective hand and say “we chose this man because he was the outstanding candidate as decided by the strictures we placed on the position”.

The next appointment is crucial and carries some caveats; they do not make for great reading. Will Derek McInnes really help Rangers to close the gap on Celtic? He recorded par with Aberdeen on a sizeable budget in the league. The best he can hope for is to do the same with Rangers.

And will the board, with all their delusions of a former grandeur, be prepared to accept second best or will the next man find himself battling the kind of unrealistic expectations that have claimed the past two coaches?