Rangers Chairman Discusses Summer Rebuild and Upcoming Signings

Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has admitted the club’s summer rebuild is still some way from complete, with three to five new signings expected before the transfer window shuts and early-season results falling short of his expectations.

Nine players have already arrived under new manager Derek McInnes, yet Rangers have taken just one point from their opening two Scottish Premiership fixtures and trail Jagiellonia Bialystok 2-1 after the first leg of their Europa League third qualifying round tie.

It is a stuttering start to what was billed as a new era.

“Clunky” business and a race against time

Speaking candidly at an open forum with shareholders in Glasgow, Cavenagh did not try to dress it up.

He described the club’s transfer work so far as “clunky” and accepted that the current level of performance is not where he wants it to be. The plan, though, is far from finished.

“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.”

That is a significant churn for a squad already heavily reshaped, and it comes with competitive pressure already bearing down. Rangers host Jagiellonia in the second leg at Ibrox on Thursday, knowing they must overturn the deficit to reach the play-off round, where either Larne or Iberia Tbilisi will lie in wait.

The stakes are obvious: European progress, financial momentum, and a chance to buy McInnes time as he tries to knit together a new team on the fly.

Big games, unfinished squad

“It sucks that we have to play a number of important games before the window closes but that's how it works,” Cavenagh admitted, summing up the awkward collision between the calendar and the club’s rebuild.

The pressure is immediate. The project is long-term. That tension is already defining Rangers’ season.

Cavenagh stressed that the board’s ambition on arriving at the club around a year ago was “sustained winning and winning sustainably” – a clear attempt to move away from short-term fixes and boom-or-bust gambles.

“I understand we're not there yet; I'm more optimistic now than I was a year ago,” he said, pointing to structural changes rather than the raw pain of the last three results.

Culture change and the weight of second place

Results, though, do not exist in a vacuum at Ibrox. They sit on top of history, expectation and a recent culture that the chairman believes had become too accepting of failure.

“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,” Cavenagh said.

That is the battle line. On one side, a support that has already seen enough false dawns to be wary of another. On the other, a board and a new manager trying to rip up old habits while the season rages around them.

Cavenagh insisted there would be no self-pity as the club navigates this rough opening spell.

“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,” he said.

Rangers now move into a pivotal week: a European tie to save, domestic points to recover, and a transfer window still very much alive. The signings will come. The real question is whether they arrive in time to turn this uneasy start into the sustained winning culture the chairman has promised.