YOU'VE MISREAD THE BLUE ROOM

Cavenagh wants success but breaking Ibrox traditions is not the way fo do it

- » KEITH JACKSON

IT'S hardly an unreasonable request.

All the fans want - all they have ever asked or expected - is for Rangers to get back to behaving like Rangers again. And given how unrecognisable their club has become over the years, that’s entirely understandable.

But, as straightforward as their demands appear, the awkward early relationship between the supporters and the American leadership feels a lot more complicated and fractious than necessary.

Theyre both coming at this from the same starting point after all. Andrew Cavenagh and Paraag Marathe didn't pump fortunes into this takeover with anything other than the best of intentions for the Ibrox club.

Like the fans, they too will be desperate for this project to get out of the blocks after a farcical false start. They have not gone to all of this trouble and enormous expense to do their investment more harm than good. They've not come here to strip the place bare.

Unlike with some of their predecessors, that would make no sense at all.

And they too are likely to have been completely blindsided by thelevels of hostility and resentment among the locals with almost every decision they sign off on.

It does feel like wires have been crossed somewhere along the line. As if the newcomers are guilty of completely misunderstanding what the base requirements were from day one. It never was about working miracles, these Rangers fans were desperate to do nothing much more than reconnect with their football club in a fresh start under a wealthy group of businessmen who shared the same levels of ambition.

That shouldn't have been beyond them. But the way in which Cavenagh and Marathe have misread the room - acting on the advice of their accident-prone executives — is what caused the mood of the support to turn from melancholy to mutinous.