Rangers Chairman Promises Reinforcements Amid Slow Start

Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has promised more reinforcements before the transfer window closes, but he did not try to disguise the reality in front of him. The results, he admitted, are nowhere near good enough.

Nine new signings are already through the door at Ibrox. One point from two Scottish Premiership matches under new manager Derek McInnes is the return so far. Add to that a 2-1 deficit against Jagiellonia Bialystok after the first leg of their Europa League third qualifying round tie, and the early-season picture is an awkward one for a board that preached change.

Cavenagh, speaking candidly at an open forum with shareholders in Glasgow, described the club’s transfer business to date as “clunky” and accepted that the squad remains a work in progress.

“There’s certainly work to be done,” he said. “I don’t like putting a number on it but certainly I’d hope three to five more players are coming in and a number will possibly go out.”

So the churn is not over. Nor is the pressure.

Rangers must overturn that first-leg deficit when they host Jagiellonia on Thursday, with a Europa League play-off against either Larne of Northern Ireland or Iberia Tbilisi of Georgia on the line. The stakes are high, and the timing is far from ideal for a team still being assembled.

“It sucks that we have to play a number of important games before the window closes but that’s how it works,” Cavenagh said, summing up the uncomfortable reality of trying to build while competing.

When Cavenagh and his fellow investors arrived around a year ago, they sold a vision: not just winning, but “sustained winning and winning sustainably”. That phrase has quickly become the benchmark by which this regime will be judged. Right now, it feels distant.

“I understand we’re not there yet; I’m more optimistic now than I was a year ago,” he insisted. The optimism, though, sits alongside a blunt acknowledgement of the club’s recent culture.

“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.”

Time is the one thing Rangers rarely get. A slow start in the league, a European tie hanging in the balance, a squad still under construction and a support demanding evidence of that promised shift in mentality.

Three to five more signings are on the way, Cavenagh says. The question now is whether Rangers can start winning quickly enough for anyone to believe this rebuild is truly different from the last.