Rangers Chairman Promises More Signings Amidst Slow Start
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has promised three to five more signings before the transfer window shuts, admitting the club’s early-season form falls well short of expectations.
Nine new players are already through the door at Ibrox, yet Derek McInnes has just a single point from his first two Scottish Premiership matches and a deficit to overturn in Europe. The mood around the club is restless. The board knows it.
“Clunky” business and a slow start
Speaking at an open forum in Glasgow, Cavenagh did not dress anything up.
“There’s certainly work to be done,” he told shareholders, describing the club’s transfer work so far as “clunky” while stressing that efforts are ongoing behind the scenes.
Rangers trail Jagiellonia Bialystok 2-1 after the first leg of their Europa League third qualifying round tie, and have already dropped league points under their new manager. It is not the launch McInnes, or the board, had in mind after a sweeping summer rebuild.
“I don’t like putting a number on it,” Cavenagh said, “but certainly I’d hope three to five more players are coming in and a number will possibly go out.”
The message was clear: the overhaul is not finished, and neither is the pruning.
Important games, unfinished squad
Rangers host Jagiellonia in the second leg on Thursday, with either Larne or Iberia Tbilisi lying in wait in the play-off round. The stakes are high, the squad still in flux.
“It sucks that we have to play a number of important games before the window closes but that’s how it works,” Cavenagh admitted.
When the current regime arrived around a year ago, he said, the ambition was “sustained winning and winning sustainably”. That phrase now hangs over every misstep, every dropped point, every VAR flashpoint.
“I understand we’re not there yet; I’m more optimistic now than I was a year ago,” he added. “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.
“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.”
The frustration is real, but so is the insistence that this is a long-term reset rather than a short-term patch job.
McInnes, Klopp and the club’s identity
On stage alongside Cavenagh were chief executive Jim Gillespie and shareholder Paraag Marathe. Inevitably, the conversation turned to McInnes, the man chosen to carry the weight of this new vision.
McInnes came agonisingly close to a title with Heart of Midlothian last season, his reputation enhanced by a front-foot style that impressed the Rangers hierarchy. Gillespie made no secret of the profile they chased.
“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,” he said. “Derek has been high on our list for a long time and we think he fits the style and culture of this club.”
The club has nailed its colours to that mast: high energy, aggression, proactive football. The early league table does not yet reflect that ambition, but the board is adamant they have the right man and will arm him with more signings to prove it.
VAR anger and a call to the SFA
The discussion did not stay on recruitment and philosophy. The weekend’s 2-1 defeat to Hibernian, and the VAR decision that led to a Hibs penalty, still stung.
Gillespie confirmed Rangers have asked the Scottish FA for clarification on the call that turned the match.
“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.”
He pushed the issue beyond one incident, questioning the broader framework around officiating.
“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 was not a rant, but it was pointed. Rangers want answers, not just explanations.
So the picture at Ibrox is layered: a new manager with a clear identity, a squad still under construction, a stuttering start, and a board publicly demanding better standards on and off the pitch. The next few weeks bring European jeopardy and domestic pressure.
With more signings promised and big nights looming, Rangers are running out of excuses. Now they need performances.
