Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has defended the process of the club’s search for a new head coach after Danny Rohl was officially unveiled on Tuesday.
In an interview with Sky Sports News, the American businessman confirmed that Rohl did indeed “back out” of the process at one stage, while the club pursued five candidates simultaneously.
The chairman also defended CEO Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell, admitting the under-fire duo have “made mistakes”, but so has he and his vice-chairman, Paraag Marathe.
Cavenagh, who fronts the US consortium that acquired a controlling majority stake in Rangers earlier this year, added that the playing squad is “incomplete”, lacking in “steel” and “experience”, and that further investment can be put into the club ahead of the January transfer window.
Here are some of the key points as he spoke to Sky Sports News following Rohl’s appointment on a two-and-a-half-year deal…
Was the head coach search a messy process?
Steven Gerrard was in talks over the Rangers job before withdrawing, with Danny Rohl landing it on a two-and-a-half-year deal
“I understand if you’re looking at just this from the outside, how it might not look good, so let me take a step back,” Cavenagh said.
“We interviewed a number of fantastic candidates. We ultimately decided to pursue five simultaneously. Three have obviously been in the press quite extensively, and two you’ve never heard of.
“I say that to highlight that we have to keep everything incredibly confidential in this process, and so our supporters only saw some portion of the process, and it makes it look, jumbled, lumpy, whatever the right adjective is, so we get why they would think that.
Rangers were in advanced talks with Kevin Muscat before talks broke down
“From inside our perspective, that’s not the case. It was a very smooth process.
“We had five fantastic candidates, and we knew that at the end of it we were going to end up with a fantastic head coach, and in our opinion, we have, we have Danny Rohl.
We get the view, but I think our view inside the club was a little bit different.”
Was anyone offered the job and did Rohl pull out of the running?
Danny Rohl did initially pull out of talks to join Rangers, says chairman Andrew Cavenagh
“In terms of offering a job, it’s not the way that it sounds where you sort of push across a letter with fancy type on it with a signature on it and say, ‘do you want this?’
“You are constantly working on things like who the coaching staff is going to be, so there’s lots of details.
“So you just pursue all of those candidates at once, and you either get to the end and everything is agreed, and then you sign a piece of paper that is the contract, or you don’t.
“The only person we’ve signed a contract with is Danny Rohl.
“Danny did at some point say he would probably back out of the process, but when that happened, we said to him, ‘look, we’re really impressed with you, let’s stay in touch, because we can see you being the head coach of Rangers at some point.’
“So behind the scenes, we did stay in touch, and obviously last week we re-engaged with Danny, and we’re thrilled that Danny is our head coach.”
Can Rangers still win the league?
Rangers trail leaders Hearts by 13 points in the Scottish Premiership
“I think everything is still to play for.
“We have dug ourselves a hole in the league without a doubt, eight behind across town and further behind top of the table, but we can still do everything in the league.
“We can still do everything for both cups, and again, we have a little bit of a hole in Europe with two losses out of two matches, but six to go, so I think everything is still in front of us.”
Do Stewart and Thelwell have Cavenagh’s support?
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Rangers chief executive Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell say they accept the criticism that has been levelled at them from the fans
“They do have our full backing. They’ve made mistakes just like Paraag (Marathe) and I have.
“When you make a mistake, you need to own it, you need to rectify it, you need to improve, and that goes for the two of them.
“It goes for Paraag, it goes for me, and it goes for everybody in the club, and moving forward, that same group, meaning everybody in the club, including the four that I just named, are also accountable.”
Will more money be spent in January?
Rangers spent around £34m in the summer, including around £10m on Youssef Chermiti from Everton
“We will sit with Danny (Rohl) over the next two months as we go through these series of matches and look at what the squad needs. We do not believe the squad is complete today.
“We didn’t believe it coming out of the summer window, that we’ve always known.
“We probably need a little bit more experience, we need a little bit more steel, and we didn’t expect to get everything we wanted in one window.
“Getting to the main question, yes, if there’s something that we need to do in the January window, we can put more money into the club.”
