Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has revealed 49ers Enterprises interviewed two mystery manager candidates to take over at Ibrox.
New Gers head coach Danny Rohl has begun to make additions to his backroom staff, as Sascha Lense has joined the club as first-team performance manager and Matthias Kaltenbach as assistant coach.
Lense most recently worked alongside Rohl at Sheffield Wednesday and was previously part of Ralf Rangnick’s backroom team at Manchester United. Kaltenbach came through the coaching ranks at Hoffenheim, where he had a six-year spell as assistant coach, working alongside current Germany boss Julian Nagelsmann. He joined Ajax’s first-team set-up in 2022 as assistant coach to Alfred Schreuder.
The duo joined first-team training on Wednesday morning ahead of the trip to Norway for the Europa League game against Brann on Thursday night. Rohl, who was appointed as Russell Martin’s successor on Monday, is expected to bring in another coach with Rangers connections.
As many know, things could have been so different had the Gers completed their moves for Steven Gerrard or Kevin Muscat, but it appears there were also two further options in the mix who are yet to be named.
Rangers had two mystery candidates alongside Rohl, Gerrard and Muscat
Cavenagh defended several of the 49ers Group’s decisions in a fan meeting on Tuesday, including signings like Youssef Chermiti, but his most interesting comment came in an interview with Sky Sports, where he revealed there were actually five manager targets.
“I understand if you’re looking at just this from the outside, how it might not look good, so let me take a step back. We interviewed a number of fantastic candidates. We ultimately decided to pursue five simultaneously. Three have obviously been in the press quite extensively, and two you’ve never heard of.
“I say that to highlight that we have to keep everything incredibly confidential in this process, and so our supporters only saw some portion of the process, and it makes it look, jumbled, lumpy, whatever the right adjective is, so we get why they would think that.
“From inside our perspective, that’s not the case. It was a very smooth process. We had five fantastic candidates, and we knew that at the end of it we were going to end up with a fantastic head coach, and in our opinion, we have, we have Danny Rohl.
“We get the view, but I think our view inside the club was a little bit different.”
Just who those names were may never see the light of day, but there were suggestions in the media during the international break that talks had been held with Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who is a free agent after a brief spell with Turkish club Besiktas.
Rohl will likely be afforded time to show he was indeed the best of the club’s five candidates, with Cavenagh also suggesting there will be money available to the former Sheffield Wednesday boss in the January transfer window.
Rangers currently sit in sixth place in the Scottish Premiership, 13 points off the summit and eight points behind rivals Celtic.
