PEDRO Caixinha last night revealed he had altered his pre-match team talk before the William Hill Scottish Cup semi-final with Celtic at the very last minute - after his assistant Helder Baptista warned him he had sensed a tension among the Rangers players during the warm-up.

The Ibrox club performed woefully in the first hour of the last four match at Hampden yesterday afternoon and conceded a first half goal to Callum McGregor and a second half penalty to Scott Sinclair.

They came back into it after falling 2-0 behind and Kenny Miller and Joe Dodoo, who had replaced the ineffectual Joe Garner up front at half-time, forced saves from Craig Gordon, the Celtic goalkeeper, in the last half an hour.

Read more: Celtic 2 Rangers 0: No bull as Pedro Caixinha's Old Firm derby debut ends in defeatThe Herald: Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha at full-time at Hampden yesterday.

However, Caixinha, who suffered his first defeat as Rangers manager in his first Glasgow derby match, felt the nervousness which his players were experiencing before kick-off may have prevented them from hitting peak form.

He said: “Helder, my assistant coach, came to me at the end of the warm up and told me ‘please, in your speech before the match, don’t be that strong, don’t be so tough, they need to feel a little bit more freedom’.

“When you don’t feel that freedom you don’t enjoy it and you don’t perform the way you need to. So we were a little bit blocked and if you are blocked, even if you have the best ide-as in the world, you cannot perform.

“He (Baptista) felt they were really tense. They were really focussed on the idea of playing the game, but totally focussed without enjoying what was going to happen. I need them to be focussed, but I also need them to be open minded in order to let my ideas and strategy flow.

“It’s not a question of being frightened. It’s a question of letting things flow in the right direction. I cannot change my approach with just one minute to go before we go on the pitch. What I changed was my speech in order to ease the tension they were feeling.”

However, Caixinha’s address to the players failed to have the desired effect – Rangers were outclassed by Celtic for long spells of a one-sided encounter and could have no complaints about the final outcome of the match.

Their Portuguese coach felt that his charges had stood off Celtic and allowed their central midfielders Stuart Armstrong and Scott Brown, who he had identified as their danger men beforehand, to dictate play.

“I think we respected too much the opponent in the first half,” he said. By respecting the opponent we dropped off too much on the park. We did not play the way we had been preparing throughout the week.

“We knew Scott Brown and Stuart Armstrong were the guys who can create all he imbalances. When you add the early goal we conceded it was difficult for us to find a way to have the ball or to have a counter attack.

Read more: Celtic 2 Rangers 0: No bull as Pedro Caixinha's Old Firm derby debut ends in defeat

“At half time we tried to change it. We changed two players and we changed Kenny, in order for him to contain Scott Brown.

“We were good in the first four minutes of the second half until the penalty. But the penalty changed things for the next ten minutes. At that moment Celtic were definitely having the momentum.

“After that we created some chances, but we couldn’t score. So we needed to be more aggressive defending, even if they didn’t have so many scoring chances. But aggressive defending was going to be the basis of our attack, to recover the ball higher up the park. But we couldn’t do it.

“The second half was more like the way we wanted to perform, but Celtic deserved to win. We could and should have done much better. We were expecting more from our team, definitely but the way we prepared and the way we performed were completely different.”

Caixinha, whose side play Celtic in the Ladbrokes Premiership at Ibrox this Saturday, will talk to his players in training at Auchenhowie this week to determine whether they understood his instructions.

“That’s something I need to speak to them about,” he said. “It’s possible and if that’s what really happened I have to admit my own mistakes. I’m a guy who is totally clear in those sort of situations. But I don’t believe that.”

“The game plan is one thing, but what we reproduced or put in practice in the match is a totally different thing. It was not our day, we could not perform the way we prepared for the game. We are always expecting and more and more from our players. But we need to keep going.

“After tomorrow’s day off we need to get to Murray Park and go with everything to start preparing for the next match and we still have five matches to go.”