Andrew Cavenagh Reflects on Rangers' Disappointing Season

Andrew Cavenagh leans into the question before he bats it away. A year into his Rangers reign, £40m spent, no trophies, a title challenge that collapsed in the final stretch – has he ever wondered why he bothered?

“No, is the answer.”

For a club that consumes its people, he sounds almost grateful for it.

This club gets into you at the molecular level

Twelve months have passed since Rangers confirmed that a consortium led by American businessman Cavenagh and 49ers Enterprises had taken a majority stake at Ibrox. It has been a year of churn, missteps and, ultimately, failure on the pitch.

Russell Martin arrived as head coach in June. By October, he was gone. The cull continued in the boardroom, with chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell both leaving the following month.

Danny Rohl came in and, for a while, looked like he might salvage something meaningful from the wreckage. Rangers’ title push flickered back into life under the new boss, only to die in brutal fashion as they lost four of their final five games. The season ended not with a crescendo, but a grim fade-out.

Cavenagh has not tried to sugar-coat it. He has already told BBC Scotland it was “incredibly disappointing” and that it “has left a terrible taste in everyone's mouths”. He does not soften that line now.

“I don't ever want to use the words ‘enjoy’ or ‘fun’ because you can't have a season like we've had and use those words,” he says.

Yet he talks about Rangers as if the club has rewired him.

“This club gets into you at the molecular level. And, once it's done, you're done. It's happened to me and a bunch of us.”

The scars are fresh. The commitment, he insists, is deeper.

Pain as fuel, not excuse

Rangers poured up to £40m into the squad and came out of the season empty-handed. For many owners, that combination would trigger doubt, distance, maybe even an exit strategy. Cavenagh says it has had the opposite effect.

“The disappointment this year is very real for us, but all it's done is provide motivation for us going forward,” he explains.

He talks about “tasting disappointment” as something that will “spur us on to where we want to get to” and “make success sweeter”. The language is familiar in football, but there is no attempt to pretend this was anything other than a failure.

He and Paraag Marathe – the fellow American who arrived as part of the San Francisco 49ers Enterprises consortium and served a spell as vice-chairman – are portrayed as almost drawn to the scale of the problem.

“The challenge is something I relish and Paraag relishes with the rest of us,” Cavenagh says. The word “relish” lands hard given the season he is describing, but it underlines his point: they are not going anywhere.

Facing the fans

If the results have been bleak, Cavenagh has at least chosen not to hide. Across the campaign he has stepped into the stands, into the concourses, into the streets around grounds, and spoken directly to match-going Rangers supporters. The most recent example came on the final day of the season at Falkirk.

“My conversations with our supporters, I've really come to enjoy,” he says, before catching himself against sounding too cosy.

“Someone told me I should get to know them on a one-by-one basis. At Falkirk, that probably wasn't the right medium to do that.”

The line carries a hint of humour, but the message is serious. He knows the anger. He has heard it up close.

What he clings to is the shared core.

“Whether it's in the stands or the streets, we all share certain things like the ambition to win and the understanding that we're not good enough,” he says.

That admission – “we're not good enough” – is not one every chairman would make so plainly. It is also the line that sets the stakes for what comes next.

“The common goal is the same so there's common ground in those conversations even if there are disagreements over methods.”

Rangers, under new ownership, have spent heavily, changed key figures on the touchline and in the boardroom, and still watched a season fall apart. Cavenagh insists it has only tightened his grip on the project.

If this is what the club does to you at a “molecular level” in year one, what will it demand of him in year two?