Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has insisted his under-fire executive team of Patrick Stewart and Kevin Thelwell retain his complete support despite the Ibrox club’s chaotic start to the season.
Chief executive Stewart and sporting director Thelwell have been the targets of angry protests from supporters following the calamitous summer appointment of Russell Martin as manager.
Cavenagh was speaking as Rangers formally unveiled Danny Rohl as successor to Martin who was sacked after just 123 days in charge, making him the shortest-serving permanent manager in the club’s 153-year history.
Pennsylvania-based businessman Cavenagh, who headed the 49ers Enterprises majority investment in the club along with vice-chairman Paraag Marathe in May, admitted the new owners have made an error-strewn start to their tenure.
He is confident they have found the right man in Rohl to turn their fortunes around on the pitch where they are already 13 points off the title pace being set by Hearts just eight games into the Premiership season.
Chairman Andrew Cavenagh (left), Sporting Director Kevin Thelwell (second right), CEO Patrick Stewart (right) pose with new head coach Danny Röhl
Rangers CEO Patrick Stewart has been the target of the Ibrox supporters’ ire
Kevin Thelwell has also failed to win over the Rangers fans following his arrival
Cavenagh stressed both Stewart and Thelwell will continue to lead Rangers’ strategic approach off the pitch despite ongoing calls from fans for them to quit.
‘They do retain my full backing,’ said Cavenagh. ‘Everybody makes mistakes and I know we have made some missteps along the way.
‘We own it. If you make a mistake you need to try and improve and we’re committed to improving, that goes for everybody at this football club.
‘It’s Patrick, it’s Kevin, it’s myself, it’s Paraag. Going forward, we’re all accountable. Our message is that we recognise the supporters’ frustration. We know why they’re frustrated, we’re also frustrated because results have not at all been where we want.
‘That’s what this really comes down to. We want to give them something to be positive about.
‘If we win football matches then we can harness this fantastic energy our supporters have in the right direction.
‘You want to be held in a positive light by supporters and we have said that we have done things wrong. We’ve owned it and we’re committed to making it right.
‘I hope the supporters read our words and see our actions and the amount of capital we have invested in the club.
‘I hope that gives them the correct impression that we love this club and we want to get it back on the right track.’
Rangers radically reshaped their first-team squad in the summer but the player recruitment, headed by Thelwell, has been far from convincing.
Cavenagh has pledged to maintain a high level of investment with 36-year-old Rohl, who has signed a two-and-a-half year contract, given scope to improve the squad in the January transfer window.
‘Our group came in and we approximately put £20million into the club last summer,’ added Cavenagh.
‘We never said that would be the full amount that we’d put in so we will look at the squad with Kevin over the course of the coming weeks and determine what we need.
‘If we can make further investments then we’re prepared to do that. We look at the squad and we recognise it’s incomplete, but then we never said we’d get it done inside one window.
‘We need to have a balance between younger players that will have a resale value and more experienced players.
‘We know the squad needs some work and we’re committed to getting it where we want it to be over the next couple of windows.
‘A phrase we have used is that the lights are brighter in Glasgow. We had players who joined our squad who had played in high pressure situations. But it’s different here.
‘We need to account for that when we are signing players. You can’t understand it until you cross the threshold here’.
Cavenagh also hit back at criticism of the process in replacing Martin which saw negotiations with both former manager Steven Gerrard and then Shanghai Port head coach Kevin Muscat break down, before Rohl was appointed after earlier apparently ruling himself out.
Danny Rohl took training on Tuesday as he looks to hit the ground running at Rangers
‘We interviewed a number of great candidates,’ he said. ‘We spoke to the two that you mentioned and to a number of other candidates that you never heard about. From the club’s perspective we have to treat this process with absolute confidentiality, or other coaches won’t want to engage with us in the future.
‘We left London 10 days ago having done a whole bunch of meetings and I said to our group how happy I was that we had five candidates, not just the three who have been talked about, who I was extremely comfortable would be great coaches for Rangers.
‘We didn’t rank people one, two and three. We had ten days at that point, tops, to get a coach into the building and so we pursued all five simultaneously.
‘The misconception that’s out there about the names you mentioned is that somehow these guys [Stewart and Thelwell] screwed it up. I was involved in every single telephone call, every single meeting, every minute with both of those candidates.
‘And I don’t believe that they didn’t come because they didn’t like Patrick or they didn’t want a sporting director. They are complicated things and eventually it didn’t work, largely due to timing on their part, a little bit on our part in the case of Kevin Muscat.
‘But while that was going on we had obviously re-engaged behind the scenes with Danny. Our focus going forward is not on who didn’t come but on who did come. We are incredibly happy that Danny Rohl is the head coach at Rangers Football Club. I think he will be incredibly successful here.’
