Andrew Cavenagh Reflects on Disappointing Season at Rangers
Andrew Cavenagh leans back, searches for the right word, and then rejects the obvious ones.
Enjoy? Fun? Not after this.
A year on from leading the consortium that seized control of Rangers, the American businessman admits the first season has been "incredibly disappointing" and has "left a terrible taste in everyone's mouths". No trophies. A title charge that collapsed when it mattered most. A £40m outlay on players that brought no silverware.
Yet doubt? He insists that never entered the equation.
‘This club gets into you at the molecular level’
Twelve months ago, Cavenagh and 49ers Enterprises arrived promising modern structure and fresh energy. What followed was turbulence.
Russell Martin came in as head coach in June. By October, he was gone. The clear-out continued: chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell were both removed the following month as the new hierarchy ripped up its own first draft.
Danny Rohl stepped in and, for a while, the mood changed. Rangers’ title challenge flickered back into life. The season, briefly, looked salvageable.
Then came the run-in.
Rangers lost four of their final five games and finished empty-handed, the sense of opportunity squandered hanging heavy over Ibrox.
Cavenagh, speaking again after his candid admission to BBC Scotland last week, did not try to sugar-coat it. But when asked if the scale of the disappointment – and the money spent – had ever made him question why he got involved, he was unequivocal.
"No, is the answer," he said. "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."
He refuses to dress up the experience as enjoyable. That word, he feels, would jar with the reality of the season Rangers have just endured.
"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 said.
What he does embrace is the fight.
"The challenge is something I relish and Paraag [Marathe] relishes with the rest of us. The disappointment this year is very real for us, but all it's done is provide motivation for us going forward."
For Cavenagh, the pain is not a warning sign. It is fuel. He talks about this campaign’s failure as something that will "spur us on to where we want to get to" and "make success sweeter" when – or if – it finally arrives.
Face to face with the anger
Cavenagh has not hidden from the fallout. Across the season he has made a point of engaging directly with match-going fans, most recently at the final fixture away to Falkirk.
It has not always been comfortable. Nor should it be, he would argue.
"My conversations with our supporters, I've really come to enjoy," he said, catching himself on the very word he had been reluctant to use about the season as a whole.
He tells a story of being advised to get to know Rangers fans on a one-by-one basis. At Falkirk, hemmed in by a crowd, he quickly realised that was not the setting for intimate introductions.
"At Falkirk, that probably wasn't the right medium to do that," he admitted.
But he keeps going back to those exchanges – in the stands, on the streets, in the raw aftermath of another setback. That is where he believes he hears the club’s true voice.
"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," he said.
There, in that blunt assessment – "we're not good enough" – is the starting point for what comes next. No excuses. No hiding behind transition or bad luck.
"The common goal is the same so there's common ground in those conversations even if there are disagreements over methods."
Rangers’ new era has begun with upheaval, missteps and a harsh lesson in Glasgow’s unforgiving standards. Cavenagh knows now exactly what he has bought into.
The question is no longer why he bothered.
It is how quickly this ownership can turn that molecular obsession into something tangible in the trophy room.
