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

For much of the past week, Davide Ancelotti, son of the great Carlo, was seen to be ahead in the race to be the new manager of Rangers.

The bookmakers shortened him to odds-on. Word from Spain was that Ancelotti was first choice. On Thursday night, a source closer to the scene in Glasgow supported that view.

On Friday, the vibe appeared to flip in Russell Martin's favour. Caution is strongly advised - this thing is fluid and capable of change from night into day - but Martin looks to be a slight favourite right now.

Other names have flitted across the landscape. Brian Priske, the former Feyenoord manager, Francesco Farioli, previously of Ajax. All respected characters. Steven Gerrard was heavily touted from the get-go but according to a source close to the decision making, Gerrard was never the frontrunner that people made him out to be.

Martin is the surprise. He interviewed brilliantly and, says a source, "gave the board an awful lot to think about".

Ancelotti versus Martin. You'd struggle to find two candidates with such different back stories. Ancelotti has worked as a coach under his father at Bayern Munich, Napoli, Everton and Real Madrid. Martin (briefly a Rangers player in a torrid era) has been manager at MK Dons, Swansea and Southampton, who he took to the Premier League last season before losing his job in December.

Ancelotti has had a safe, stable and apparently glamorous upbringing. Martin has spoken powerfully about the domestic violence of his youth and how it passed from his grandfather to his father, how his dad physically abused his mum and how his father lost the family home through his addiction to gambling.

"I look back at stuff that I found normal as a kid and now realise it was not normal," he told the Sunday Times in November 2023.

Martin would be a tougher sell to Rangers supporters. His coaching is driven by his admiration for the possession football of Barcelona, Manchester City and Spain.

He took Southampton into the Premier League via the play-offs (in the final they beat Leeds United, whose chairman Paraag Marathe is now also vice-chairman of Rangers in the new regime announced on Friday), but his name doesn't appear to be setting hearts fluttering 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 (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.

The mystique and mystery of Ancelotti or the more experienced management and known track record of Martin? They cannot afford to get it wrong. An announcement is expected next week. Perhaps very early next week.

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.

Cavenagh has taken the place of Fraser Thornton, who was only in the post since mid-December last year. Thornton, however, remains on a board that's now unrecognisable.

For a decade and more, Rangers have gone through any amount of chairmen, chief executives and managers. There isn't enough wall space at Ibrox to picture them all. Not that many of them, in the eyes of Rangers people, deserve to be pictured.

Change has been a constant part of Rangers over the past decade - and there's more change now. Profound change. A new chairman, a new vice-chairman, five new American board members coming in with three old ones moving out. Thelwell, starts on Monday.

Under Thelwell and the new manager, plus the new manager's assistants, there will be a significant reimagining of the football operations department, a huge piece of work needing to be done on a failing sector. As one executive put it when talking about Auchenhowie, the Rangers training base: "The place needs to be gutted."

There will also be a squad re-build, or an attempt at one. Conservatively, Rangers need five new first-team starters. Maybe six. Some might argue they need more. They need to find young gems for small money while establishing a functioning player trading model, which is the centrepiece of the new regime.

Apart from bedding in a new board, a new sporting director, a new management team, a new playing squad, a new scouting and recruitment department and new thinking on the academy, it's, er, business as usual. There's at least continuity in the canteen staff - we think.

Cavenagh is said to be demure, unflashy and unlikely to be appearing 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, doesn't want the limelight, but he's a football nut and this is his baby."

That same person says that there is no way that Cavenagh, Marathe or any of the other newcomers can fully grasp what they are getting themselves into.

The madness of football life in Glasgow has to be experienced. Nobody can teach you about the suffocating nature of it when things aren't going well.

Cavenagh has no experience of owning a football club, but that's where the machinery of the 49ers Enterprises group comes in. Marathe has been described as the driving force of the project, the razzmatazz to Cavenagh's stoicism.

Commercial and hard nosed, Marathe has performed wonders as Leeds chairman since 49ers Enterprises took full control at Elland Road. There are certain parallels between the Leeds that Marathe moved into as chairman in the summer of 2023 and the Rangers he's now involved in.

Leeds had just been relegated after three seasons in the Premier League. The feeling of failure at Rangers after the season just gone is comparable.

Marathe and the 49ers' leadership team knew that their first major decision was in appointing a new manager. The same applies now. He hit the jackpot with Daniel Farke. How Rangers people will hope that he can repeat the trick 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 iffy decision making by others at Elland Road, recruitment and player trading was a huge challenge for Marathe and the 49ers group and they nailed it. The team was re-built.

Georginio Rutter, Crysencio Summerville. Luis Sinisterra and Archie Gray were sold for eyewatering money. Between July 2024 and May 2025 they brought in more than £130m in transfer fees.

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 shrewd management. Rangers folk are entitled to feel excited. Marathe and the 49ers group don't just talk a good game. They've put it out there for all to see.

Meanwhile, Leeds supporters are entitled to ask why key figures at their club are now getting themselves so involved in the affairs of another.

The bottom line of £20m investment into football operations is only part of the new owners' commitment. Various figures are floating around as to how much they actually spent in acquiring their 51% shareholder, but "north of £60m" is how it was described by a source. Some have put it as high as £75m.

It's the £20m that has drawn the most attention, though. Is that it? Or is there more to come? A Rangers optimist might say that the new owners would hardly publicly announce a budget of double or treble that number for fear that selling clubs would see them coming and adjust their demands accordingly.

Until they can be quizzed - none of the five Americans on the board will be moving to Glasgow, which will be fine… as long as things are positive at Ibrox - we can't know how much is actually there to redo the squad. What we do know is that player trading is utterly essential to what the new owners are hoping to do. A level of ruthlessness is overdue at Rangers, for too long a soft touch.

Rangers have done well recently in reducing a wage bill that was described as "out of control" by a former director.

Players who could have been sold for profit were not sold. Rangers talked about the necessity of a player trading model but never actually committed to it. This, it's believed, is 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. There's ongoing interest in the striker.

The bottom line of £20m is small money - Celtic got more than that for Matt O'Riley - but it's how it is spent that matters. What the new owners are attempting to do is what Celtic have been doing for years. Find potential, develop it, sell it for profit. Rinse and repeat.

If there's a war chest, they're not talking about it. Most likely, there's prudence, common sense and, if they have the stomach for the fight, a long-haul project.

This doesn't look like 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's a Herculean task.

For years, though, a canny and influential figure at Parkhead used to ask what was happening "over the road" at Rangers and for many years - with the exception of one title-winning season - the answer was "not a lot".

That's not the answer anymore.