On June 5, 2025, Rangers CEO Patrick Stewart and sporting director Kevin Thelwell flanked Russell Martin at Ibrox, unveiling him as the club’s new head coach. 172 days later, all three men had been sacked by chairman Andrew Cavenagh. And that, in short, tells you everything you need to know.
So just 50 days after Thelwell and Stewart dismissed Martin, they received a taste of their own medicine. Yesterday’s bombshell news that both men had been dismissed brought an inevitable conclusion to a farcical period in the club’s history.
Four straight league wins and Danny Rohl’s positive impressions have lifted the mood slightly in recent weeks, but Stewart and Thelwell leave having overseen a period of calamity. Cavenagh, who flew into the country overnight on Sunday, was left with no choice. He is a man who favours process and retains a calm demeanour, but this double-sacking ripped up the script. Quite simply, it was no longer worth following.
While the American businessman said he didn’t want to throw “dirt” on either “skilled executive”, he did his talking in delivering a stinging line: “Simply put, when we think about what we need in both CEO and sporting director today, it's different than who we think Patrick and Kev are.”
This is the story of events throughout 2025 that made such a conclusion a matter of when, rather than if.
Patrick Stewart’s appointment as CEO last December, six months on from James Bisgrove’s departure, was supposed to provide clarity at Rangers. Instead, many insiders have suggested that morale has been even lower in recent months than when the club operated without a CEO, chairman or sporting director at the tail end of 2024.
Stewart arrived with plenty of experience following 18 years working at Manchester United. Yet the 53-year-old felt badly out of touch with the club and its fans from the start, making decisions that appeared at odds with the new era he was hired to usher in and unlikely to deliver the unity required. Going on the offensive against supporters after a TIFO display in May’s Old Firm, for example, was one of many own goals.
Starting his role roughly three weeks after being appointed seemed strange at the time. Immediately, pressure was on as Philippe Clement’s Rangers swung from one crisis result to the next, effectively counting themselves out of the title race just days into 2025.
On a cold Saturday morning in January, members of the media were summoned to Ibrox for a briefing with the CEO to confirm his backing of Clement. The Aberdonian reiterated that sacking managers “was not a silver bullet”, citing old club Manchester United as an example.
Using the Red Devils as a benchmark of standards, despite the club’s obvious public decline, was to be a regular refrain that routinely irked staff at various levels throughout his tenure. United seemed to be referred to as a hallmark of quality, yet Sir Jim Ratcliffe's subsequent actions at Old Trafford since last year's takeover, tearing down what had gone before, would suggest otherwise.
Stewart doubled down on that position despite the embarrassment of a Scottish Cup exit at the hands of Queen’s Park around a month later. “We have been underperforming as a club for several seasons now and that's not down to a manager”, he said in an interview with RangersTV on February 19, discussing the result as a source of shame but insisting he wanted to find the “root cause” of underperformance. “We've changed the manager and it's not made a difference. Until we sort the root causes, then it's akin to trying to fix a broken house and starting with the ceiling instead of starting with the foundations.”
By the Sunday of that week, after a 2-0 defeat at home against St Mirren, Stewart's resolve had weakened. He sacked Clement just four days after claiming he would not on club TV, who wasn’t informed of the news until late in the evening amid planning training for the next day.
Later, in an interview with the BBC, Clement said of his sacking: "I was also angry that moment because all the journalists knew before me. I got a lot of messages from Scotland, England and Belgium even before I got a message from the club, so I was not happy with that. That's not good. I told them also that it was totally disrespectful at that moment.”
Stewart is not a sporting director and his lack of deep understanding of football and measuring performance against results was held as a weakness by various sources, especially in those early months. Underlying data had shown for some time that things were not improving. Clement used results to justify bad performances in his end days and vice versa, with Stewart known to stick closely to that line after heading from the manager's offices after a post-match debrief after games. He stuck by the Belgian until, like in the case of Russell Martin, the outside noise from fans became too loud to ignore.
Some supporters had welcomed Stewart’s commissioning of an independent football review, although staff members questioned the eventual impact of Sportsology's report beyond advising a football structure that most modern clubs already follow. Especially given that in a few months, new owners with new ideas would be putting their own stamp on things.
Some in the game privately questioned the validity of the review being external: surely a well-paid new CEO's job was to identify weaknesses and solve them? While that review was ongoing, Barry Ferguson was appointed interim manager until the end of the season after Clement was sacked and because the club had no sporting director, Ferguson effectively became the de facto head of football.
Many questioned the reality of contingency planning given the uncertainty that followed Clement and later Martin’s sacking. The day after Clement was sacked, in particular, was generally regarded as chaotic internally. Stewart's poor decision-making in that first full month put him firmly on the back foot and he lacked the personality or gravitas to ever recover.
Those final few months of the season should’ve been used to transition into the following campaign, but instead, they felt wasted. Ferguson naturally focused on results and although he ran Athletic Club close in the Europa League quarter-final, domestic form only spiralled.
In Stewart’s defence, he had the US takeover to focus on, but appointing Ferguson before pivoting to polar-opposite Martin was not the type of launchpad required for such a risky summer appointment. It was naive. Indeed, Ferguson believed he had a chance of landing the job full-time until after the final game of last season against Hibs on May 17.
Upon appointing Martin, Stewart branded the former Norwich captain a “cultural architect”, a line that triggered wincing inside and out of the club, especially with the passing of time. Alongside Thelwell, Stewart firmly allied himself to Martin. One source described the three meeting in view of Sky Sports cameras after an opening day draw against Motherwell as feeling calculated and unnecessary.
Stewart spoke often about the culture he wanted to create. Truly, any CEO can use buzz words like "alignment" and "culture" in an interview; it's providing the necessary leadership to action such a vision that's the tricky part. Many believed Stewart lacked the character and personal touch for such a difficult role.
“In a sports club, whatever the sport is, if you've not got the right culture you're not going to be winning either on or off the pitch so we've got to make sure that everyone's presenting the best version of themselves, everyone's pulling together," he told members of the written press in June after Martins' unveiling.
“From ownership, myself, Kev, Russell, we're all really focused on culture and that's one aspect of the alignment I'm talking about is we all understand what a positive culture looks like and what you need to do to build that and if you get that right, then the winning follows that. It’s every aspect.”
Given that the winning never followed, it is fair to assume that such a positive culture never arrived.
The entire Martin era was an episode in mismanagement. The former head coach said he would not wear a suit, which was a small detail to an outsider, but one the CEO should’ve known would cause unnecessary noise. Former CEO Bisgrove had insisted that Clement wear a suit, for example, appreciating the nuances of small wins in Glasgow. Indeed, up until it was too late and Martin was handed a police escort out of the Falkirk stadium, supporter opinion seemed disregarded as an irrelevance.
Martin’s football was so dogmatic in those early days that Rangers sleepwalked into one of the most embarrassing nights in the club’s history - a 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge. From the top, a culture of idealism seemed to reign, with reality ignored on an evening of total and utter humiliation. Rangers fans had suffered enough of such trauma without another ghastly entry. In the European games that followed, the Rangers Review understands that a separate flight was chartered foro corporate guests, rather than travelling with executives. A tense flight home from Brugge had hardly been surprising given the nature of the defeat.
Indeed, the Rangers Review understands that Thelwell and Stewart didn’t return to the director’s lounge after the game in Belgium, as is customary during European trips, but instead headed straight to speak with Martin and reaffirm their backing before any media duties. They stuck firmly to his side in the aftermath of a fallout with Nico Raskin, who questioned the tactical approach after that game, before being told to train away from the group before the following weekend’s 0-0 draw with Celtic. One source explained to the Rangers Review that while Raskin can be outspoken and will challenge managers, he was made a convenient scapegoat at the time.
By the time Stewart and Thelwell were forced to pull the plug on Martin, any remaining credibility had vanished in the eyes of supporters. Here was a CEO who had backed and sacked two managers in well under a year, after all. There were no foundations to this house. The building had never started.
It is not always the job of a CEO to be the most popular man in the room. Equally, they are the leader in the building, and it is the leaders who set the tone. Some staff were left bemused at the style of a ‘town hall’ meeting led by Stewart at the Rangers training centre during the October international break after Martin’s sacking, while others questioned the intention of the optics behind Stewart’s recent joining of the European Legal and Regulatory forum.
“Rangers needs to be present in the rooms where decisions are shaped both domestically and in Europe to make sure the interests of our club and supporters are understood,” Stewart said upon that announcement. Yet it was his own consistently poor decisions closer to home that were being honed in on by those above.
Thelwell’s time at Rangers will read 175 days in the history books, only a little longer than Martin survived. Like Stewart, he arrived from the Premier League having worked as Everton’s director of football for three years. Although perhaps more of a case of the wrong movie than a bad actor, Thelwell’s copy was quickly blotted with errors.
The sporting director had two key missions to get right this summer - strengthen the squad in a transfer market where more financial resources were available than at any point in the past two decades and appoint the correct head coach. On both fronts, that mission failed spectacularly. Rangers have a net spend of £20million from this summer, but what exactly is there to show for it?
Ally McCoist reasoned this morning: “The departures of Patrick Stewart and Kevin Thelwell are not a shock, not a surprise. I've been constant with this all along, the recruitment has been appalling, really. It has been appalling. Not poor, not bad. Appalling.
“We have signed players this year, and not one of them has been better than any of the players we have let go. So that's one of the reasons that we are where we are."
The undercurrent of so many staffing additions associated with the sporting director’s history at Wolves and Everton, culminating in the appointment of his own son Robbie as head of recruitment, and commissioning the second-highest transfer fee ever spent by the Ibrox club on Youssef Chermiti, used up political capital that had never been earned. Having moved away from recruiting in the English markets due to a lack of value and inflated wages, finding and flipping Hamza Igamane and Jefte under Nils Koppen’s new approach, nine of this summer’s 13 arrivals came from English clubs.
One source explained to the Rangers Review that the speed of negotiations impressed them and their client over the summer months. A more cynical voice commented that the club had to meet asking prices quickly because they’d pivoted to new markets and approaches so quickly from May to June.
Thelo Aasgaard, Youssef Chermiti, Oliver Antman and Manny Fernandez cost nearly £20m combined. For that type of money, the club required transformative impacts. Joe Rothwell and Max Aarons usurped Raskin and James Tavernier for all of two weeks; the captain relied on more than ever despite another year of football in his legs. There is a belief held by many that this squad is weaker than last season’s and serious questions remain about the value gained for money spent.
The club clearly required a new spine and fresh leadership, and Martin was emboldened to drop Tavernier and Raskin while exploring the addition of a goalkeeper all summer, despite Jack Butland probably being Rangers’ best player since July. All three would be quickly relied upon again after a transfer window that exacerbated issues of years gone by instead of solving them.
Thelwell’s standing in the eyes of moderates crossed a red line when he appointed his son Robbie as the club’s new head of recruitment. Some moments in football require a double-take but even by Rangers’ standards in recent years, this was quite something. Only very few figures could get away with such a move in Glasgow and the seeming lack of appreciation for optics told its own story. Thelwell's assertion that his son would work "25/8" after a "transparent" recruitment process didn't really convince the doubters.
Alongside the money spent on Chermiti, who still only has one goal to his name at Rangers, former colleagues at Everton and Wolves were appointed to head up scouting and the academy. That is why the timing of these dismissals raises questions about Thelwell's recent building out of a football structure. Thelwell has appointed an academy director (Jonathan Hunter-Barrett), head scout (Nathan Fisher), head of recruitment (Robbie Thelwell) and set-piece coach (Scott Fry) in the last two months. This follows bringing in his own technical director (Dan Purdy) in the summer.
Thelwell spoke to players in the days ahead of a Scottish Premiership clash with Dundee United, which was managed by Stevie Smith, with so much flak directed upstairs following Martin's dismissal and the managerial search, the sporting director challenged the group to improve on performances that had gleaned a solitary win from seven league matches. Despite a promising first half, a 2-2 draw was another underwhelming result in a season packed full of them.
Thelwell and Stewart decided to replace Koppen as technical director with Purdy in early June. Koppen could point to a track record of actual player-trading in the form of Hamza Igamane and Jefte, having acquired both for small fees in a summer of minimal spend compared to 2025, and without anything close to the staffing support now in place, that, alongside the very successful loan spell of Vaclav Cerny. Igamane, now one of the form strikers in Ligue 1, was viewed by many internally as an example of a model of recruitment that Rangers should continue to follow after investment. Targeting unproven young players with potential from new markets, instead of shopping in the Premier League.
Instead of pairing Koppen’s familiarity with Rangers, the Scottish league and knowledge of wider markets, Purdy was quickly brought in, having worked as Thelwell’s understudy at Everton, and the focus turned to English leagues.
The appointment of Martin was rooted in a belief that Rangers required an identity - a finding of the independent football review and belief of Thelwell’s - and that the former Southampton boss could provide it. A strong salesman who had made a good impression on staff at the training ground as a player, executives also drew on his 2018 loan spell as evidence that he “knew the club”.
Thelwell spoke of the dominant football Martin’s teams had played in the past. Across the board, however, there appeared to be a lack of appreciation for the difficulties and time Martin experienced at each club in achieving those ends. Martin lost his first four games at MK Dons, won one of four at Swansea and went on a four-game losing streak early in his Southampton spell. The teething problems Martin would experience introducing such a high-wire style in such a pressured environment seemed to be underconsidered from the outside, especially considering this was an unpopular appointment. How exactly were Rangers supposed to “build the plane while flying it”, to quote Stewart? Again, reality did not follow words.
This was a search for identity done backwards. The backdrop of a Ferguson interim spell, a strong cultural fit for supporters, before the most ambitious appointment in the club's history, was always going to require near-perfect recruitment or near-perfect implementation of style. Martin was too dogmatic until it was too late and when he became a little more flexible after Brugge, he was done in the eyes of the support. There was no base to build from or fall back on while recruitment had left only last season’s spine, and occasionally Djeidi Gassama, to perform with any sort of reliability.
“We think that the group is a good group. We think they're capable of much much more,” was the sporting director’s remark at Danny Rohl’s unveiling press conference. In multiple interviews, Thelwell has talked up the potential of this side, but in terms of actual performance, little has been delivered. Rangers’ current xG difference of 0.12 is jaw-droppingly low even by last season’s poor standards when 0.83 was averaged. Across two managers, this team’s underlying numbers claim that fourth place is exactly where they should be, unimaginable given the money spent.
Thelwell often explained his role as sporting director was to support the head coach with the best services around him. In the short term, his role was to lead the recruitment overhaul of the squad, to give whoever stands in the Ibrox dugout the best chance of success. Ultimately, on that account, he failed and wouldn't see another transfer window in Glasgow.
When a US consortium led by Andrew Cavenagh and supported by the 49ers group purchased a 51 per cent stake in Rangers this May, the many chapters of drama off the pitch, superseding entertainment on it, were supposed to be over. Instead, more issues upstairs have been squeezed into six months than at any point since the club’s on-pitch decline started in 2021, with Rangers themselves the sole architect of their issues. That is one of the main reasons supporter anger has been so strong of late - this start has been so underwhelming based on the hope invested.
Like Martin’s dismissal, it could be argued that this decision by Cavenagh has been reactive instead of proactive because, for some time, it was evident fans would never accept Stewart or Thelwell. The toxicity has been overwhelming.
Although Cavenagh and Marathe took more of a hands-on approach in the appointment of Rohl, Thelwell has spent recent months restructuring the sporting department with the support of Stewart. The former CEO was inherited, but the new ownership signed off on the appointment of Thelwell and both were backed by the chairman as they unveiled a new head coach last month.
Cavenagh once again fronted up in speaking to TV cameras yesterday, to his credit, but the US-based businessman will know that only so many of these mistakes are manageable, inside and out of the club. He spoke to players after the heavy Brugge defeat and explained the time of knee-jerk decisions was over in relation to Martin's future, yet a few months on, those who stood by his side (Martin, Thelwell and Stewart) have all been sacked. A club owner is only as good as those they appoint to run their club, because although Cavenagh’s visits have increased since autumn, he is not on the ground day to day.
There is a belief that Rangers have a model that will work instead of boasting owners who want to make all the decisions themselves, but without the right executives steering the ship, a model is only a theory.
What now for the January window? Cavenagh stressed that quality will supersede speed in these hunts to fill key offices. However, with a squad that so drastically needs two or three to raise the level of others around them, when Rangers made such errors in the summer window, how can they now get a more difficult one right? Who leads on recruitment? Rangers have managed themselves into a corner of hiring a sporting director’s son, who now, alongside the technical director that said sporting director brought to the club with him, becomes the de facto head of recruitment after his father was fired. What will Rohl's role be in all of this, having now assessed the squad?
That is why timing poses such an issue in spite of Cavenagh making a drastic call, one which few saw coming in recent days and surprised staff, informed initially by email under an hour before a club statement and later told more by Cavenagh on a staff call.
If the damage was bad enough to fire both Stewart and Thelwell, how much time will it take to undo the damage? Stewart has been the focus of banners calling for his removal for months and Thelwell has replaced Martin’s face with a big red cross through it as of late.
Read more:
- Chris Jack: Why Cavenagh sacked Stewart and Thelwell: Fan feeling, investor pressure, transfers
- Andrew Cavenagh gives update on Robbie Thelwell following his father's Rangers exit
- Andrew Cavenagh explains Patrick Stewart and Kevin Thelwell Rangers sackings
Protests have not been defined by a few extreme voices but by widespread dissent at a rate unseen in many supporters’ lifetimes. During a home match against Roma, there were so many banners popping up around the ground that it was hard to keep track. “Thelwell get to fuck” complemented a refrain that had long been directed at Stewart and Martin. Once those songs are sung, it's a long way back. If any hopes that a new manager would draw a line and reflect a fresh start still stood for Cavenagh, who was in attendance that night, protests from all four stands against the pair dashed them defiantly.
Although Rohl is viewed as a popular appointment amongst the fanbase, the recruitment process to appoint him appeared anything but seamless. The German pulled out of the race as Kevin Muscat became the chosen candidate, and that was after Steven Gerrard had flown into London for talks that, according to a source near negotiations, could very legitimately have ended in the signing of contracts.
Gerrard was believed to have concerns about the quality of the squad and structure he’d inherit. The Liverpool legend has worked well with sporting directors and CEOs in the past, but his reservations have perhaps been confirmed by yesterday’s news. Later, he explained, talking to TNT Sports: "There were a few things I was uncertain about. And if I'm going to take a challenge that big and that important - I've got that affection and connection with Rangers - for me to take that on again, it had to be perfect and I had to be 100% ready."
Frustration internally at an inability to properly punish the weakest Celtic team in 15 years hasn’t helped the mood. One source explained to the Rangers Review their annoyance that relief permeated the atmosphere after a 0-0 Old Firm draw following the Brugge drubbing, more than any sense of a missed opportunity.
By this weekend, Cavenagh had made his call, with Thelwell and Stewart vacating their roles immediately. There was to be no transition period or handover, while Stewart hadn’t been at Saturday’s 2-1 win over Livingston.
The image of Thelwell, Stewart and Martin at the top table to announce the manager's arrival will connote a period of chaos and false promises, not the bright new dawn that was hoped for. The American dream of ‘Making Rangers Great Again’ still has lives to live, but this first catastrophic opening period means achieving it feels as far away as ever.
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