So the question must be asked, why exactly is the silence surrounding these discussions becoming so suspicious that it’s very close to deafening?
06:00, 20 Oct 2025Updated 10:07, 20 Oct 2025
You’ve really got to hand it to Andrew Cavenagh and his Yanky Doodle Dandies..
They paid top dollar to take over an absolute basketcase of a business just a few short months ago and, without pausing to take a breath, they’ve seamlessly turned it into a raging bin fire.
That takes a bit of doing and it has certainly lended a level of vindication to those of us who warned that things were very likely to get worse for Rangers under American ownership before they could get any better.
However, it must now be said, the second part of that prediction is rapidly becoming a matter of considerable doubt.
Because if Cavenagh isn’t thinking too clearly amidst the clouds of chaos and confusion which have engulfed the club during his short time in charge then he might be about to make the same catastrophic mistakes all over again.
And, if that’s the case, then there’s no guarantee that things will get any better at all in the medium to longer term.
Patrick Stewart, Kevin Muscat and Kevin Thelwell
Record Sport broke the bombshell news on our agenda setting Hotline Live show yesterday afternoon that the move to make Kevin Muscat had crashed into a stumbling block.
By tea time, the club was confirming that the move for Muscat had collapsed.
All of which means Cavenagh has been undermined and maybe even sabotaged by people on his own payroll.
On Thursday night it did feel as if a huge step forward had been taken with an agreement in principle pretty much set in stone to appoint Muscat as Russell Martin’s successor.
And yet here we are, four days on, and it’s all gone up in smoke again – just as his initial plan to bring back Steven Gerrard was set alight after holding positive talks with the Scouser in London.
Cavenagh and Muscat also thought they had effectively shaken hands on a deal. There was certainly no suggestion that the 52-year-old was being ruled out on the basis that he might not be available to start work until December.
On the contrary, Muscat left that meeting and started putting together his backroom team.
Neil McCann
Had it been tied up and signed off last week , as it should have been, then Muscat’s right hand man Neil McCann would have been minding the till in the home dugout for Saturday’s visit from Dundee United.
That it was left to under 19s coach Stevie Smith to take responsibility for dropping another two league points was something of a surprise – and that’s when the alarm bells started to clatter.
The Aussie had been coveting the top job at Ibrox for quite some time having narrowly missed out two years ago, when some genius concluded that Philippe Clement was a better fit for it.
That felt like a mistake at the time and the fact that Rangers are back in the exact same position yet again – with Muscat the latest to turn them down – is the irrefutable proof of gross mismanagement on an industrial scale.
Getting Muscat in from the Far East as soon as humanly possible would have constituted a decent start.
So, now that is not going to happen, the question must be asked, have the people Cavenagh has placed in charge of taking care of the business dropped the ball behind his back all over again?
Certainly, Muscat’s initial talks with Cavenagh and vice chairman Paraag Marathe appear to have been nothing but entirely positive on both sides.
During those discussions the wide parameters of a deal were laid out and there was a collective willingness and desire to get it all put in writing.
So what could possibly have happened in the intervening days to bring it all shuddering to a halt? Or, to put it another way, who could possibly have happened?
And the finger of suspicion points squarely in the direction of three particular individuals – Gretar Steinsson, Kevin Thelwell and Patrick Stewart.
Steinsson may lurk around in the shadows given his role as a football guru to the San Francisco 49ers but he wields a great deal more influence in the Rangers command centre than many people might realise or imagine.
The Icelander appears to have worked some sort of magic trick on the Americans, convincing them to place their unstinting trust in him even despite his less than auspicious playing career.
At his very peak he made it to Bolton Wanderers. That was arguably the high water mark throughout a journeyman pathway lasting 16 years.
And yet somehow now he’s helping to decide who ought to be put in charge of hauling Rangers out of the brown stuff – having already played a huge part in the decision which plunged them half way down the toilet pan in the first place.
Probably as a result of his low profile, Steinsson has escaped much of the flack for the appointment of Russell Martin. But the reality is his finger prints were all over it.
It was left to Steinsson and Thelwell to head up that recruitment process and the fact that they succeeded in nailing their colours to the mast of the worst manager in Rangers’ history ought to be seen as a sackable offence all by itself.
But, as if that was not enough, there’s a strong working theory that this pair were also the reason why Gerrad suddenly thought better of coming out of semi-retirement in Bahrain, having travelled 4000 miles to meet with Cavenagh and Marathe in London.
Can you imagine what Cavenagh might conclude now that somehow they have combined to pull the same mind manipulation stunt on Muscat?
And that’s before Cavenagh stops to take a more in depth review of some of the other decisions for which Thelwell has been responsible during his first few months in the job.
Like giving his former club as much as £10m for a striker who has no track record of putting the ball in the back of the net. Or putting his own 26-year-old son in charge of the club’s recruitment department.
It’s almost as if Thelwell believes himself to be bomb proof and little wonder.
Rangers sporting director Kevin Thelwell(Image: SNS Group)
No matter how obvious his ineptitude, regardless of his glaring incompetence somehow or another Cavenagh appears not to have noticed or paid the slightest bit of attention.
If neither he nor vice chairman Marathe possess the smarts to realise that chancers like Steinsson and Thelwell are the problem and not part of the solution then it’s hard to see how Rangers might start the recovery process.
And that it’s all going on under the nose of a chief executive in Stewart who does or says nothing about it?
Well that really ought to trigger the Americans into conducting an urgent rethink of the structure they have put in place, the roles they have created in middle management and the people they have chosen to fill them with.
And then who knows? Maybe the likes of Gerrard and Muscat might suddenly become a whole lot easier to deal with.
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