Keith Wyness claims he knocked back Rangers years ago for the CEO position and believes he knows what they need
Rangers need someone older, wiser, and better at communicating with the fans than Patrick Stewart to be their next CEO. That’s the view of former Aston Villa, Everton and Aberdeen chief Keith Wyness – who claims he rejected that very job at Ibrox years ago.
After the San Francisco 49ers-backed takeover was approved in the summer, new chairman Andrew Cavenagh brought in Stewart as CEO and with him Kevin Thelwell as sporting director. But after a disastrous summer saw a number of transfer misfires and the catastrophic appointment of Russell Martin, the Californian businessmen brought out the flamethrower last week and got rid of both on the same day.
Now the hunt is on for the next men to lead the club forward and Wyness, who spent four years as Aberdeen’s chief exec before leaving for Everton in 2004, thinks he knows what they need.
And the 68-year-old revealed that he was once offered the job himself, but turned it down.
Wyness told the Inside Track podcast: “It’s going be important to make the right decision as to who’s going to go in there.
“It’s very rare to see a CEO and a sporting director sacked on the same day. Normally you try and not destabilise the whole club. You try and maybe do one after another at different times. I think the downfall for both of them was probably their strength of personality and the way that they handled the media and the communication with the fans.
“I don’t think Patrick Stewart was a great communicator. I don’t think he had the strength of personality. And I don’t think Kevin Thelwell did the same either.
“So I think if you’re going to be chief executive of Rangers, and I was asked quite a long time ago and I did turn it down, then I would say you’ve got to be a very forthright, strong personality and really understand the rough and tumble of Glasgow.
“And as a sporting director, you’ve got to have more than just a level of understanding of the Premier League, which is what Thelwell had. I think you’ve got to be a bit broader and more experienced than that. And I think I’d want somebody a little bit older.”
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