Rangers chairman Andrew Kavenagh has revealed that the 49ers Enterprise has interviewed two mystery manager candidates to replace him at Ibrox.
Gers’ new head coach, Danny Rohr, has begun adding to his backroom staff with Sacha Rense joining the club as first-team performance manager and Matthias Kaltenbach as assistant coach.
Lens most recently worked with Rohr at Sheffield Wednesday and was previously part of Ralf Rangnick’s backroom team at Manchester United. Kaltenbach began his coaching career at Hoffenheim, where he worked for six years as an assistant coach alongside current Germany national team coach Julian Nagelsmann. He joined Ajax’s first-team establishment in 2022 as assistant coach to Alfred Schreuder.
The pair took part in first-team training on Wednesday morning ahead of a trip to Norway for Thursday night’s Europa League match against Brann. Rolle, who was appointed to replace Russell Martin on Monday, is expected to bring in another coach with Rangers links.
As many know, things could have been very different if the Gers had completed the signing of Steven Gerrard or Kevin Muscat, but there also appear to be two further options that have yet to be named.
Rangers had two mystery candidates alongside Rolle, Gerrard and Muscat
Cabena defended several decisions by the 49ers group during Tuesday’s fan meeting, including signing Youssef Celmiti, but his most interesting comments came in an interview with Sky Sports, where he revealed he actually had five managerial targets.
“I understand that if you’re just looking at this from the outside, it might not look very good. So let me take a step back and tell you. We interviewed a lot of great candidates, and ultimately we decided to pursue five at the same time. Three obviously had pretty extensive coverage and two I had never heard of.”
“I say this to emphasize that everything has to be incredibly confidential in this process, so our supporters have only seen part of the process and it looks messy and lumpy, whatever the appropriate adjective is, so I can see why they think that.
“From our internal perspective, that’s not the case. It was a very smooth process. We had five great candidates and we knew we would end up with a great head coach. And in our opinion, we are and we have Danny Rohr.”
“We understand that view, but I think our view within the club was a little different.”
The identity of these names may never see the light of day, but there were suggestions in the media during the international break that talks may have taken place with Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who is a free agent after a short stint at Turkish club Besiktas.
Rolle is likely to be given time to prove he is truly the best of the club’s five candidates, with Kavenagh also suggesting there will be funds available for the former Sheffield Wednesday manager in the January transfer window.
Rangers currently sit sixth in the Scottish Premiership, 13 points behind the leaders and eight points behind rivals Celtic.