Rangers 'didn't screw up' head coach appointment

Danny Rohl was among five candidates targeted by chairman Andrew Cavenagh

Chairman Andrew Cavenagh insists Rangers did not "screw up" the process to appoint head coach Danny Rohl but admits it looked "clunky" from the outside.

The Ibrox club came close to appointing both Steven Gerrard and Kevin Muscat before agreeing a deal with Rohl, who himself withdrew from the process before eventually taking the role.

Both sporting director Kevin Thelwell and chief executive Patrick Stewart have been criticised by Rangers supporters for their perceived roles in the club's poor start to the campaign, but Cavenagh defended their work in finding Russell Martin's successor.

"I think the misconception that's out there that I'd like to just clarify around the names you mentioned is that somehow [Thelwell and Stewart] screwed it up," Cavenagh said.

"I was involved in every single telephone call, every single meeting, every minute with both [Gerrard and Muscat].

"And I don't believe that they didn't come because they didn't like Patrick or they didn't want a sporting director.

"Eventually, it didn't work largely due to timing on their part, a little bit on our part with the case of Kevin.

"But, while that was going on, we had obviously reengaged behind the scenes unbeknownst to people with Danny.

"While I'm happy to talk about this, our focus going forward is not on who didn't come, it's on who did come and we're incredibly happy that Danny Rohl is the head coach of Rangers Football Club."

Cavenagh says some reporting of the managerial hunt was not entirely factual, which led to the perception that the process did not run smoothly.

"There's asymmetric information - what's out in the press versus what is actually happening," he said.

"It looked clunky from the outside perspective. It wasn't at all clunky from our perspective inside the club."

Why didn't a deal happen for Gerrard or Muscat?

Cavenagh insists Rangers never had a leading candidate and dismissed the idea that Rohl was third choice behind Gerrard and Muscat.

Talks were held with several coaches in London beyond Rohl, Muscat and Gerrard and Cavenagh says there were five names he would have been delighted to move forward with.

"We interviewed a number of great candidates," he said. "We spoke to a number of other candidates that you've never heard about.

"We left London 10 days ago, having done a whole bunch of meetings and I said to our group how happy I was that we had five candidates - not the three that have been talked about - I was extremely comfortable would be great coaches for Rangers."

When pressed on why Rangers were unable to finalise a deal for either Gerrard or Muscat, Cavenagh described both situations as "complicated".

"We didn't rank people one, two and three," he said. "We had 10 days at that point, tops, to get a coach into the building, so we pursued all five simultaneously.

"Was anybody offered the job? The way that it works isn't like that. You don't have a big ceremony and send somebody a letter with a bow on it."

The American implied that neither Gerrard nor Muscat were officially offered the role as they pursued multiple candidates simultaneously.

"You're working on a whole bunch of different details at the same time," he added. "The two people you mention are complicated.

"They're halfway around the world, they have families, they'd have to move, they're coming in mid-season.

"So what you're trying to do on every candidate is just constantly try to move the ball forward and figure out, 'can we make this happen'? And again, we're doing that with five different people at once."

Meanwhile, Rohl has moved quickly to start forming his backroom team, being joined by new men's first-team performance manager Sascha Lense, who worked with him at Sheffield Wednesday, and assistant coach Matthias Kaltenbach, previously with Ajax, at training on Wednesday.