The Rangers realisation that astounded Andrew Cavenagh as Dave King hopes board mood swings are now thing of the past

Daily Record

2 days ago

King reckons that now the grownups in charge, the boardroom moodswings that have plagued the club will become a thing of the past
Say what you want about the men who've run Rangers for the past decade but you can't fault the devotion to a club most have supported since they were wearing short trousers.
Around the boardroom, tens of millions have been poured into a passion first developed as children.
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The trouble is that much of those huge sums have been squandered by a series of blunders verging on the schoolboy.
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The job now for the new American regime in control at Ibrox is to return the Light Blues to the top of the class in Scotland.
And if there's one thing offering re-assurance to Dave King, it's that the grown ups are now in charge.
The former chairman was one of those boyhood supporters who gave his all - and most certainly his fortunes - in the pursuit of making Rangers great again.
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But having been born and raised in Glasgow, the Castlemilk native was as susceptible as any of the men he shared the director's table with of getting caught up amidst the reactionary mindset of the larger Ibrox faithful.
He saw how a bad night in Perth or Paisley could lead to dire consequences for the manager in the dugout.
But with the mature heads of Andrew Cavenagh and his partners from 49ers Enterprises now in charge, King hopes the days of boardroom mood swings are over.
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King - who handed over his 14 percent stake in the club last week as the US consortium concluded their £75million takeover - said: 'I remember speaking to Andrew and he was astounded by the extent to which we won a game, we lost a game, and there was doom and gloom at board level.
'As supporters you can do that, but as a board you can't be making decisions around transfer business because you lost on Wednesday night in Paisley.
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'You need a proper football plan, a proper financial plan. I think sometimes when you've got too many supporters on the board, immediate results start to introduce knee-jerk thinking - 'Get him out, get him in, fire the manager'.
'You've got to be careful that you don't get caught up in that because it's dangerous. I think the new owners are going to come in with a plan and they'll stick to it.
'When things don't go well, it'll be fine. They won't throw the plan aside. I'm expecting that level of maturity because these are very mature investor business people who are looking at Rangers in a very mature way.
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"These are not some supporter that's coming in because the jacket, tie and brown brogues are important to them.
'They see Rangers as a great business opportunity and quite frankly, it is.
'But it was never going to be one as long as it remained a parochial cap-in-hand set-up. It can't be, 'Oh we need a couple of million quid so let's go around the directors and get a loan'.
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'We had to break away from that. It's something I thought we had with 55, keeping Steven Gerrard on board and defending the title.
'I really thought we'd turned the corner, but unfortunately, it was decided to take Steven out of the picture.
'I regret that, but it is what it is. We are where we are.
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'I'm definitely excited, genuinely excited about the progress the club will make now this transaction has gone through.'
Cavenagh and Co have kicked-off the new era at Ibrox with a promise to inject an initial £20million into the club's transfer kitty.
That will do for starters but more, a lot more, will be needed to make Rangers a serious contender for prizes.
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Taking on a Celtic side that have lifted 13 of the last 14 league crowns will not be easy but King is confident that new owners grasp the appetite for success which is now their job to feed.
'I do think that's an exact understanding,' he said. 'The ambition most certainly must be to win a trophy next season.
'My understanding is the expectation is to be competitive next season.
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'I think the squad that we've got at the moment is way short of what we need to have a sustained run at the title while simultaneously participating in Europe.
'It's no surprise this year that the guys were up for it in Europe because that's just almost a mentality aspect of Europe.
'I don't know if some of them regarded that as being a shopping window - but the fact is they weren't quite up for going to Perth or Paisley or places like that.
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'We need people that understand it the way Barry Ferguson did.
'Barry and guys like Allan McGregor understand what it takes to win league titles.
'It's not about the glamour games. It's about going away in a wet, windy, cold night to Aberdeen, to St Johnstone and grinding out an ugly 1-0 result.
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'When I looked at the team, when we were down with 40 minutes to go, I wasn't seeing the leadership on the pitch.
'I wasn't seeing the characters on the pitch that were saying, come on, and grabbing them.
'If that was Richard Gough, he'd have been tackling the guys himself.
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'I think we're way short on players. That's why I'm trying to moderate expectations to say as much as the 49ers are coming in to make an impact as quickly as they can and as sensibly as they can, I'm just concerned it might take a wee bit longer than we as supporters would like.
'But it doesn't mean we won't be going forward all the time.'
A fresh pile of American's dollars will certainly help Rangers close the gap on Celtic.
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But just as valuable will be the business and sporting expertise being brought to the table by the Stateside consortium with their NFL experience.
King added: 'They're not guys that are just going to throw money at the club.
'There's going to be a football plan and there's going to be a financial plan behind that.
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'Andrew and the investors coming in understand there's going to have to be a substantial net investment.
'It's really how much is going in total because we have to get some guys out as well.
'We've been paying a lot of money for players, some that virtually never started and others that give us very little time on the pitch.
'If they can get them out and free up the wages and add the new money, then it could be a very, very substantial new investment.'