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Andrew Cavenagh has overseen Rangers exercise in crisis management

· Andy Newport · 2026-08-14T16:13:25+00:00 · nguồn gốc

Andrew Cavenagh has overseen Rangers exercise in crisis management and one thing is more costly than Euro cash hit The latest blow to the American era at Ibrox came in the Europa League on Thursday "Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Andrew Cavenagh’s management speak might work well in the offices of his health insurance firm back in Pennsylvania, but here in Scotland it’s tends to leave folk feeling all a little queasy. And what’s increasingly clear is that Rangers fans are sick to the back teeth of the culture of chaos that has resulted from the American regime’s lack of a clear strategy in Glasgow. Forget breakfast, Cavenagh's first year at Ibrox has been a downright dog’s dinner. It reached it’s nauseous nadir with Thursday night’s Europa League exit at the hands of Jagiellonia Bialystok, a result that will see Gers take a £5million hit as they tumble into the Conference League for the first time. But what will be more costly for Cavenagh and Co is the acceleration of the erosion of trust in the men who were supposed to be making Rangers great again. The benefit of the doubt the Ibrox faithful were willing to give the new board amid last year’s false start has now evaporated. And if this new campaign carries on like it has done in Derek McInnes’ first four miserable games in charge, it won’t be long before the old ghostbuster bed sheets are being given a fresh airing. McInnes might be getting his share of the flak right now. But having already seen Russell Martin, Patrick Stewart and Kevin Thelwell ousted following a furious fan backlash, Cavenagh and Paraag Marathe should expect to find themselves in the fans’ sights too. The chairman and his sidekick from the San Francisco 49ers are never shy about trotting out the old corporate jargon and this week’s blizzard of buzzwords at the club’s shareholder meeting was another masterclass in executive babble. The past year at Ibrox has produced classic cringe soundbites from others about the need to “fly the plane while we’re building it” and boasts of “working 25/8” to solve the multitude of problems that have grounded the club’s trophy ambitions. But it’s time for people at the club to speak plainly. In blunt terms, they simply have to get serious about what they are trying to achieve as a football club and make clear how they plan to do it. Because right now this is not a club with meaningful ambitions about winning. There appears to be no long-term plan to restore the Light Blues to where the fans expect them to be The 12 months under Cavenagh have been an exercise in crisis management, blundering from one emergency response to the next, with the situation only deepening, seldom improving. We’re talking about a club that has bounced from the blind idealism of Martin to the supposed pragmatism of Danny Rohl in their search for a modern head coach. Now they’ve turned the clock back in the hope that McInnes’ old-school man management skills can get the job done. But McInnes’ powers of inspiration can only lift a team so far and certainly can’t make up for the on-going mistakes the club continues to make in the transfer market. The Gers squad has long been a patchwork collections of odds and ends put together by a variety of bosses with differing styles. And it’s never been more evident than now, with McInnes desperately trying to stitch together nine of his own signings into the remnants of Martin’s rebuild from last year and the cover-up work done by Rohl in January. But just as its impossible to draw a straight line between the approaches taken by the three men who have been hired by Cavenagh as gaffer, it’s looking increasingly difficult to see how you can form a cohesive unit out for the rag-tag bunch he’s allowed them all to sign. McInnes has been crying out for attacking flair since the day he took up his dream job two months ago. It took seven weeks for Diasuke Yokota to arrive and while the little Japanese ace certainly looks lively, he can’t lift this lumbering line-up on his own. Now the move for PSV ace Couhaib Driouech has collapsed on the back of an issue found in his medical, it’s back to the drawing board. But McInnes doesn’t have the time to waste now that he’s fighting to win over those who doubted he was the man for the job. One thing that is clear about the new manager, though, is that he is one of the few men at Ibrox who seems to grasp what’s really required. As a star of the club’s golden period in the 1990s, he has seen what proper Rangers standards look like. And unlike his chairman, he’s made no attempts to befuddle the fans with his assessment of why things have got off to such a wretched start. You could have confused Martin and Rohl for Comical Ali with a fringe after listening to some of their attempts to spin a narrative around their team’s failing performance levels last year. With Del, at least his honest takes on the four games he’s overseen match what the fans are seeing. He has indemnified what’s gone wrong, and he knows what’s needed to put it right. But he can’t do it all by himself and it’s going to take strong leadership at the top to fix the mess Cavenagh has helped create. Words might be cheap, as Cavenagh admitted this week, but you don’t win titles by scrimping and saving either. There’s three weeks left of the window and Rangers have to be bold if they’re to save this season. Anything else is just paying lip service.