Rangers Chairman Promises Three to Five New Signings Amid Clunky Start
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh did not bother with gloss or spin. Three competitive games into the season, one point on the board in the league, a Europa League tie hanging in the balance – and he called it as he sees it.
“It’s clunky,” he admitted to shareholders at an open forum in Glasgow. The word hung in the air because it fits. Rangers have recruited heavily, changed the manager, talked about culture and standards – and yet they are already chasing.
Nine new signings are in the building. Cavenagh expects that number to rise.
“I don’t like putting a number on it,” he said, before doing exactly that. “But certainly I’d hope three to five more players are coming in and a number will possibly go out.”
Heavy turnover, slow start
The scale of the rebuild under Derek McInnes has been clear all summer, but the early evidence on the pitch has been unforgiving. One point from two Scottish Premiership matches has left Rangers playing catch-up before August is out, while Europe offers no comfort yet either.
A 2-1 defeat away to Jagiellonia Bialystok in the first leg of their Europa League third qualifying round has turned Thursday’s return at Ibrox into a stress test of this new era. Win, and a play-off against either Larne or Iberia Tbilisi awaits. Slip again, and the questions grow louder.
“It sucks that we have to play a number of important games before the window closes but that’s how it works,” Cavenagh said. The frustration is obvious: a squad still under construction is already being asked to deliver season-defining results.
When the current board arrived around a year ago, Cavenagh insists the target was clear: “sustained winning and winning sustainably”. The first part is under scrutiny. The second is being built on the fly.
“I understand we’re not there yet; I’m more optimistic now than I was a year ago,” he told the room. “We could look at how things have gone in the first three games and sit here and sulk, but we’re not going to do that.”
Changing a mindset
For all the talk of tactics and transfers, Cavenagh keeps coming back to mentality. In his view, Rangers had allowed second place – and occasionally worse – to become normal.
“When we came in, we realised finishing second and sometimes worse was seeping into every corner of this club and we had to change that, but it takes time.”
That is the tightrope. Time to reshape a squad and a culture, but no time granted by a support that measures everything against winning trophies and beating Celtic. Results like Sunday’s 2-1 defeat to Hibernian only sharpen that tension.
‘Klopp-style’ McInnes at the helm
Sitting alongside Cavenagh was chief executive Jim Gillespie, who fielded the inevitable questions about McInnes himself. The former Heart of Midlothian manager pushed the title race close last season, but arrives at Ibrox with expectations on a different scale.
“You can go for a Pep [Guardiola] style manager or a [Jurgen] Klopp style manager – we wanted a Klopp-style manager who plays on the front foot,” Gillespie explained. “Derek has been high on our list for a long time and we think he fits the style and culture of this club.”
Front-foot football, intensity, aggression – it is an appealing sales pitch. Right now, though, the league table and the European scoreline tell a harsher story. That is the gap McInnes has to close quickly, with a squad still being reshaped around him and injuries already biting, including to Chermiti after Rangers rejected a bid for the striker.
VAR anger and a call for answers
Gillespie’s focus was not only on recruitment and the manager. The board is also pushing for clarity from the SFA over the VAR intervention that led to Hibernian’s penalty in Sunday’s defeat.
“It was my understanding that it has to be a clear and obvious error for the referee to be called over,” he said. “I didn’t see that as either clear or obvious.”
The complaint goes beyond one incident. Gillespie pressed the wider issue: “We need a strategy for developing referees and VAR. My question for the SFA would be ‘what is the strategy for improvement?’ – we have to get improvement.”
It is a familiar Ibrox theme: a demand for standards on the pitch, in the dugout and now in the officials’ room. But while the club looks outward for answers on VAR, the more pressing scrutiny sits closer to home.
Rangers host Jagiellonia on Thursday with their European route, their early-season mood and their new project all on the line. The board has promised more signings, a different mindset and a front-foot manager to lead it.
Now comes the part that defines every Rangers season: can the talk survive the next 90 minutes at Ibrox?
