Rangers Chairman Andrew Cavenagh Reflects on a Disappointing Season

Andrew Cavenagh leans back, searches for the right word, and pointedly avoids the obvious ones.

Enjoy. Fun.

“You can’t have a season like we’ve had and use those words,” the Rangers chairman says. The admission is as stark as the league table that framed his first year in charge: no trophies, a title bid that collapsed in the run-in, and a club still searching for stability after a whirlwind of change in the boardroom and the dugout.

Yet he insists on one thing: regret has never entered the equation.

A year of upheaval, and no silver

Twelve months ago, Rangers confirmed that a consortium led by American businessman Cavenagh and 49ers Enterprises had taken a majority stake in the club. It was sold as a new era, a modern, data-driven project with heavyweight backing from the group behind the San Francisco 49ers.

What followed was anything but smooth.

Russell Martin arrived as head coach in June. By October, he was gone. The axe then swung again in November as chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell were both removed from their roles. For a club that craves continuity, it felt like a reset button being hit every few months.

Danny Rohl stepped into the chaos and, for a time, Rangers stirred. The title race, which had seemed to be slipping away, flickered back into life under the new boss. Performances sharpened, belief returned, and the mood around Ibrox briefly shifted.

Then came the collapse. Rangers lost four of their final five league games and with it any chance of salvaging a season that had already burned through too much goodwill and far too much patience. The investment, up to £40m on players, brought no tangible reward.

“Incredibly disappointing,” Cavenagh has called it, admitting it has “left a terrible taste in everyone’s mouths.” There is no attempt to dress it up.

‘This club gets into you at the molecular level’

So did the scale of the failure, and the sheer volatility of the first year, ever make him question why he bothered?

“No, is the answer,” he says, firmly.

“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.”

This is the language of someone who understands that Rangers is not a casual undertaking. It consumes. It demands. It exposes. For Cavenagh, that intensity has not repelled him; it has locked him in.

He refuses to pretend he has enjoyed it, but he does not shy away from the fight.

“The challenge is something I relish and Paraag [Marathe] relishes with the rest of us,” he says, referencing the fellow American whose 49ers Enterprises involvement briefly saw him serve as Rangers vice-chairman last season.

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

The message is clear: pain first, then payoff. Or that’s the plan.

Cavenagh believes tasting this kind of failure will “spur us on to where we want to get to” and “make success sweeter” when – or if – it arrives. For a support that has heard similar rhetoric before, the words will only carry weight if they are backed by smarter decisions and visible progress.

Face to face with the anger

One thing Cavenagh has not done is hide.

He has been visible at games, not just in the directors’ box but among match-going fans, engaging directly with supporters during a season that offered them little joy. The most recent example came at Falkirk on the final day, where he again put himself in the line of fire.

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

That line carries a hint of wry humour, but also an acknowledgement of the tension. This is a support that does not tolerate mediocrity, and this season has been exactly that.

Yet Cavenagh insists there is a shared foundation that keeps those conversations constructive, even when the criticism is sharp.

“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 says.

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

Ambition to win. Understanding they’re not good enough. In those two phrases, he sums up Rangers’ current reality: a club with the infrastructure and backing to aim high, but with performances and decisions that have fallen short.

The investors are in, the money has been spent, and the chairman insists the club now occupies “150%” of his thoughts. The question, as another pivotal summer looms, is whether that obsession can finally turn brutal disappointment into the kind of success that really does make all this suffering feel sweeter.