Andrew Cavenagh's Turbulent First Year at Rangers

Andrew Cavenagh leans back, considers the wreckage of his first year in charge of Rangers, and doesn’t flinch.

“Rangers occupies 150% of my thoughts,” he says. After a season without a single trophy and a campaign that unravelled in brutal fashion, it sounds less like a slogan and more like a confession.

A turbulent first year in power

It is a year since Rangers confirmed that a consortium led by the American businessman and 49ers Enterprises had taken a majority stake in the club. The fanfare was loud, the promise clear: modern investment, modern methods, a modern Rangers.

What followed was chaos.

Russell Martin arrived as head coach in June. By October, he was gone. Chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell followed him out the door the very next month, victims of a project that never found its rhythm.

Danny Rohl stepped in and, for a while, changed the mood. Under the new boss, Rangers clawed their way back into the title race, dragging life out of a season that had seemed lost. Then, just as belief began to harden into expectation, the team collapsed again, losing four of their last five games and watching their challenge die in slow motion.

For a club that had spent up to £40m on players, the end result was stark: no trophies, no consolation, no hiding place.

Cavenagh has not tried to sugar-coat it. He told BBC Scotland last week that it had been an “incredibly disappointing” season, one that “has left a terrible taste in everyone’s mouths”. He is not softening that assessment now.

No doubts, no escape

The obvious question hangs there: was it worth it?

Had the scale of the failure, and the scrutiny that comes with Ibrox, ever left him wondering why he had bothered?

“No, is the answer,” he says, bluntly.

“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.”

There is no talk of enjoyment. No attempt to dress the year up as a learning curve or a character-building exercise.

“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 sounds more like someone describing an obsession than an investment. The pull of Rangers, as so many before him have discovered, does not care much for balance sheets.

Pain as fuel

If there is a theme to Cavenagh’s first year, it is pain. But he is determined that it will not be wasted.

“The challenge is something I relish and Paraag [Marathe] relishes with the rest of us,” he says of his fellow American, who arrived as part of the San Francisco 49ers Enterprises consortium and served as vice-chairman for a spell.

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

He talks about tasting disappointment as something that will “spur us on to where we want to get to” and “make success sweeter”. It is a familiar sporting refrain, but at Rangers it carries a different weight. This is a club where second place is not a staging post; it is a failure. A trophyless season, after heavy spending and sweeping change at the top, is more than a setback. It is an accusation.

Cavenagh is choosing to treat it as a starting point.

Face-to-face with the anger

One thing he has not done is hide. Across the season, he has stepped into the stands and onto the concourses, engaging directly with match-going fans. The most recent example came on the final day at Falkirk, where he again made himself visible and available.

“My conversations with our supporters, I've really come to enjoy,” he says, picking his words carefully.

“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.”

It is a wry admission. Falkirk, on the final day of a failed season, is not the ideal backdrop for quiet introductions and long chats. But the point stands: he is listening.

“But 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.

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

There, in a sentence, lies the fault line that will define his tenure. The ambition is shared. The anger is shared. The standard is shared. What differs is how to fix it.

Cavenagh insists Rangers has burrowed into him “at the molecular level”. The next season will show whether that obsession can deliver the ruthlessness and clarity this club demands—or whether the terrible taste of this first year lingers even longer.