‘Martin or Ancelotti just one of the questions Rangers can’t get wrong’

Davide Ancelotti, the son of the great Carlo, was viewed as the front-runner for the majority of the week in the race to become Rangers’ new manager.

The bookmakers shortened him to odds-on. Ancelotti was the preferred choice, according to Spanish opinion. A source closer to the scene in Glasgow supported that view on Thursday night.

On Friday, the vibe appeared to flip in Russell Martin’s favour. Although Martin appears to be a slight favorite at the moment, caution is advised because this object is fluid and adaptable from night to day.

Other names have flitted all over the landscape. Brian Priske, the former Feyenoord manager, Francesco Farioli, previously of Ajax. All characters who are respected. Steven Gerrard received a lot of praise right away, but a source close to the decision-making claims that Gerrard never emerged as the frontrunner he was touted to be.

Martin is the surprise. He did a fantastic interview and, according to a source, “gave the board a lot of thought.”

Martin versus Ancelotti. You’d struggle to find two candidates with such different backstories. Under his father, Vincelotti worked as a coach for Real Madrid, Napoli, Bayern Munich, and Everton. Martin, who he took over as manager of MK Dons, Swansea, and Southampton last season before losing his job in December, was briefly a Rangers player during a torrid era.

Ancelotti has had a safe, stable and apparently glamorous upbringing. Martin has made a powerful speech about how his father lost the family home as a result of his gambling addiction, how his grandfather physically abused his mother, and how domestic violence in his youth passed from his grandfather to his father.

In November 2023, he told the Sunday Times, “I look back and realize things that I thought were normal,” and then realize they were not.

Martin would be a tougher sell to Rangers supporters. His admiration for Barcelona, Manchester City, and Spain’s possession football drives his coaching.

He won the play-offs to advance to the Premier League for Southampton (they defeated Leeds United in the final, whose chairman Paraag Marathe is now the vice-chairman of Rangers under the new administration announced on Friday), but his name doesn’t appear to be causing people’s hearts on the Broomloan Road.

Andrew Cavenagh (the new Rangers chairman and the senior figure in the takeover), Marathe (new Rangers vice-chair, chairman of Leeds and president of San Francisco 49ers Enterprises), Gretar Steinsson (a technical director at Leeds and now a significant influence at Ibrox), sporting director Kevin Thelwell and chief executive Patrick Stewart are the key people in the appointment.

From Alastair Johnston to Craig Whyte, from Malcolm Murray to Sandy Easdale and onwards to David Somers, Dave King, Douglas Park and beyond, Rangers are now on their 13th chairman since David Murray packed it in for good almost 16 years ago.

Fraser Thornton, who hasn’t been in the position since mid-December last year, has been replaced by Cavenagh. However, Thornton continues to be a member of an unrecognisable board.

For a decade and more, Rangers have gone through any amount of chairmen, chief executives and managers. At Ibrox, there isn’t enough wall space to picture everyone. Not many of them, in Rangers’ eyes, merit being pictured.

Change has been a constant part of Rangers over the past decade – and there’s more change now. significant change Five new American board members are joining, along with three new members leaving, as well as a new chairman and new vice-chairman. Thelwell, starts on Monday.

There will be a significant redesign of the football operations department under Thelwell and the new manager, along with the assistant manager. This will require a lot of work to be done on a failing sector. The Rangers’ training facility, Auchenhowie, needs to be gutted, according to a senior executive when describing the situation.

There will also be a squad re-build, or an attempt at one. Rangers need five brand-new first-team starters, strictly speaking. Six might be that. Some might argue they need more. While establishing a functioning player trading model, which is the new regime’s backbone, they need to find young gems for a small sum of money.

Cavenagh is portrayed as demure, unflashy, and unlikely to appear in the media all that often, if at all. He is, says somebody who knows him and the world he’s about to enter, “the complete opposite to Dave King. He won’t want to do interviews, he won’t want to be in front of the cameras, but this is his baby because he loves football.

According to the same person, Cavenagh, Marathe, or any other newcomers are unable to fully comprehend what they are getting themselves into.

The madness of football life in Glasgow has to be experienced. When things don’t go well, no one can explain to you how suffocating it can be.

Cavenagh is unfamiliar with running a football team, but the 49ers Enterprises group’s machinery can help. Marathe has been described as the driving force of the project, the razzmatazz to Cavenagh’s stoicism.

Since the acquisition of Elland Road by 49ers Enterprises by Marathe, a commercial and hard-working man, has transformed Leeds as chairman. There are some similarities between the Rangers he currently leads and the Leeds he became chairman of in the summer of 2023.

Leeds had just been relegated after three seasons in the Premier League. After the recently finished season, Rangers’ feeling of failure is comparable.

The first major decision made by Marathe and the 49ers’ leadership team was appointing a new manager. The same applies now. Daniel Farke and he had a hit. How will Rangers fans hope he can do the same thing in Glasgow.

The Leeds of 2023 had a disconnect between the fans and the club and that’s been the case for a while now at Rangers.

After years of disagreeable decisions made by other employees at Elland Road, Marathe and the 49ers group faced a significant challenge in terms of recruitment and player trading. The entire team had been rebuilt.

Georginio Rutter, Crysencio Summerville. For astonishing sums of money, Louis Sinisterra and Archie Gray were sold. More than £130 million in transfer fees were brought in by them between July 2024 and May 2025.

In came many of the driven characters who won the Championship in early May, some for chunky fees, others for nothing or half-nothing. It was incredibly wise management. Folks who are afraid have a right to be excited. Marathe and the 49ers group don’t just talk a good game. It is available for everyone to see thanks to them.

The new owners’ commitment to investing £20 million into football operations only serves to bolster their position. There are various estimates of how much money they actually spent to acquire their 51% stake, but a source described it as “north of £60m.” Some have put it as high as £75m.

However, the $20 million has attracted the most attention. Is that accurate? Or is there more to come? A fan of Rangers might speculate that the new owners would hardly ever announce a budget that would be double or triple that amount in public out of concern that selling clubs would come along and make changes to their demands.

We can’t yet determine how much of the squad’s redo is actually going to be done until they can be quizzed, since none of the five Americans on the board will be moving to Glasgow, which will be fine as long as things go well there. What we do know is that player trading is utterly essential to what the new owners are hoping to do. Rangers should have a soft touch, for too long, in a ruthless manner.

Rangers have recently succeeded in lowering a former director’s claim that the pay bill is “out of control.”

Players who could have been sold for profit were not sold. Rangers questioned the necessity of a player-traded system, but he never actually took a position on it. This is thought to be going to change.

If there’s an appealing offer for Nico Raskin (probably the club’s most marketable player) then he’ll be gone, same with Cyriel Dessers or anybody else. The striker is still in the public eye.

The bottom line is that 20 million is small money; for Matt O’Riley, Celtic received more than that, but it matters how it is spent. What the new owners are attempting to do is what Celtic have been doing for years. Find potential, develop it, and monetize it. Repeat and rinse.

If there’s a war chest, they’re not talking about it. There is most likely common sense, prudence, and, if necessary, a long-haul project.

This doesn’t appear to be a quick fix. It doesn’t have the impression of an immediate threat to Celtic’s dominance and to be get anywhere the new board are going to have hit the bullseye in trading the way they’ve done at Leeds. That is a formidable task.

A clever and powerful Parkhead employee for years, however, frequently questioned what was going on “over the road” at Rangers, and the answer was “not a lot” with the exception of one title-winning season.