AS if Pedro Caixinha’s job at Ibrox wasn’t difficult enough as it was.

Rangers were, despite the arrival of players like Bruno Alves, Graham Dorrans and Ryan Jack during the summer, always going to find it difficult to challenge Celtic for the major honours in Scottish football once again this season.

The £30 million plus which their city rivals are poised to bank imminently from qualifying for the Champions League group stages for the second season running will make their already arduous task even more demanding.

If Caixinha, though, was at all demoralised by the prospect of the Parkhead club, who romped to what is surely an unassailable 5-0 win over Astana in the first leg of the play-off on Wednesday evening, growing even stronger financially yesterday then it did not show.

The Portuguese coach insisted he was unconcerned about the substantial additional funds which his opposite number Brendan Rodgers, who wasn’t exactly short of options as things stood, will soon have to lavish on his squad.

The former Uniao Leiria, Nacional, Santos Laguna and Al-Gharafa manager has worked in similar predicaments previously in his career and is simply focused on making Rangers as competitive and successful as possible with the resources which he has at his disposal.

“Yesterday I watched Olympiacos against Rijeka, I didn’t watch Celtic,” he said. “I just know the result. Yes, it’s a question of money and if you have more money you can invest more money. But it’s not my concern, having more money or less money.

“It’s my concern to know in which direction this football club is working and that we are all working together in the same direction. That is my only concern.

“Football is about quality, football is about players. If you have more money you might get better players, that’s the way it is. But you need to spend it wisely. It’s not only about budgets in football. Budgets are important, but it’s not always about budgets.

“I am very happy with the team we have and the effort we are putting in together as a football club, from top to bottom. From the chairman, from the board of directors, from the technical staff and of course from the players. We all work hard to get the club on the right direction.

“We know that we still need to work harder and harder and harder and that’s what we are doing. We don’t care about what the others are doing or not, we just know in which direction we are heading and we know we are heading together in that direction.

“In Mexico the budgets are more balanced today, but when I was at Santos Laguna, the ranking of the budget there was about 11th or 12th out of 18 teams. It’s not always a question of budgets. It’s a question of how you organise a club and everyone working in the right direction and taking care the history and tradition and culture of the club and the winning mentality that you want to create.”

Caixinha is rather fond of an analogy and he offered another yesterday to emphasise that he is not prone to eyeing what those around him have covetously and instead prefers to focus on the challenges facing him.

“When I was younger I was living in a building and some of my neighbours had a Porsche,” he said. “Of course, I thought one day I would like to drive a Porsche. But I didn’t care that they had one and I didn’t. I know which way I am heading and today I can tell you I am having a Porsche and I can drive a Porsche. This is the way you need to go.

“The challenge I have is winning on Saturday. And after that to win the next one. That’s what we need to do. That’s our focus. I’m not here to compare ourselves with anyone. We have to make our fans proud to have the team back. We feel it and they feel it.”

Rangers desperately need to get back to winning ways in their Ladbrokes Premiership match against Hearts at Ibrox tomorrow following their 3-2 defeat in a bruising encounter with Hibs at the weekend.

Their task will be made more difficult by the fact that Jamie Walker, the winger who they are keen to sign and have had two bids rejected for, is set to return after several weeks out.

Caixinha, who will have Ryan Jack available after the midfielder won his appeal against the red card he received in the first half of the Hibs match, has been pleased with the response of his players to the loss.

“We had a day off after the match and then we had a session,” he said. “Normally we make our analysis and reflect, but I didn’t speak about the match. The players gave me an answer by working hard. I didn’t need anything else.

“They did it that day, the day after, the day after. Today I had to say: ‘Hey boys, calm down, we need to be fresh!’ But the answer will come in the game on Saturday. When something happens that you are not expecting and you lose a game you need to move forward.

“We are all on the same level, we are all a team, we are all a squad. The guys starting now are doing very good.”