Andrew Cavenagh Reflects on a Challenging Year at Rangers

Andrew Cavenagh leans back, thinks for a second, then smiles at the absurdity of the question. Why did he bother?

A year into his reign as Rangers chairman, with no trophies, a sacked head coach, an overhauled executive team and a title challenge that collapsed when it mattered most, he insists the doubt never crept in.

“No, is the answer.”

A year of upheaval, a season that stung

Twelve months ago, Cavenagh and a consortium fronted by 49ers Enterprises swept into Ibrox with a majority stake and the promise of a new era. It has been anything but smooth.

Russell Martin arrived as head coach in June. By October, he was gone. The clear-out continued in the boardroom, with chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell both dismissed the following month as the new regime moved quickly and ruthlessly.

Danny Rohl stepped into the chaos and, for a while, dragged Rangers back into the title fight. The revival felt genuine. The noise around Ibrox changed. The league table did too.

Then the pressure hit. Rangers lost four of their final five league matches and finished empty-handed, a run-in that stripped away the optimism and left what Cavenagh calls “a terrible taste in everyone's mouths”.

He has already described the campaign as “incredibly disappointing”. He does not soften that now.

‘This club gets into you at the molecular level’

Money has gone in. Up to £40m spent on players across the season, yet no silverware to parade and no cathartic moment to justify the outlay. For many owners, that would be enough to trigger a quiet internal inquest: was it worth it?

Cavenagh’s response is to lean into the obsession.

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

He refuses to dress it up as fun.

“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.”

What he does embrace is the grind. The fight. The chance to fix what has so obviously gone wrong.

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

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

He believes the pain has value. That feeling the sting now will “spur us on to where we want to get to” and “make success sweeter” if and when it comes.

Facing the fans, not hiding from them

For all the money and the titles on a CV, Rangers remains a club that judges its leaders on how they front up when things go wrong. Cavenagh has not stayed in the directors’ box.

He has sought out supporters at several matches, stepping into the stands, speaking in the streets, taking the heat as well as the handshakes. The most recent of those exchanges came at Falkirk on the final day, a bleak backdrop for a season review.

“My conversations with our supporters, I've really come to enjoy,” he says, picking his words carefully, aware of how that might sound after such a bruising year.

“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.”

He laughs at that, but the message is clear: he wants the dialogue, even when it is uncomfortable.

“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.”

That line matters. Rangers, by his own admission, “are not good enough” right now. There is no attempt to spin it, no appeal to patience without accountability.

The first year of the Cavenagh era has delivered upheaval, heavy spending and hard lessons. The chairman insists it has also delivered something else: a sharper edge, a deeper obsession, and a boardroom now feeling the same gnawing urgency that has driven the stands for generations.

The question is no longer why he bothered. It is how quickly he can turn that molecular-level commitment into medals.