Rangers Chairman Andrew Cavenagh on Summer Rebuild Progress
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh has admitted the club’s summer rebuild remains a work in progress, with up to five more signings expected before the transfer window closes and early-season results falling short of expectations.
The Ibrox side have already brought in nine new players under new manager Derek McInnes, but the overhaul has yet to translate into momentum on the pitch. One point from their opening two Scottish Premiership fixtures and a 2-1 deficit to Jagiellonia Bialystok in their Europa League third qualifying round tie have sharpened the mood around the club.
Speaking at an open forum with shareholders in Glasgow, Cavenagh did not try to dress it up.
“There’s certainly work to be done,” he said, describing the club’s transfer business so far as “clunky” while insisting the push to strengthen the squad remains intense. He stopped short of giving a precise target, but his intentions were clear.
“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.”
The timing is awkward. Rangers face Jagiellonia in a pivotal second leg at Ibrox on Thursday, knowing that either Northern Irish champions Larne or Iberia Tbilisi of Georgia lie in wait in the play-offs if they turn the tie around. The stakes are high, and the squad is still under construction.
“It sucks that we have to play a number of important games before the window closes but that’s how it works,” Cavenagh admitted, a blunt assessment of a situation every manager and board dreads: season-defining fixtures with a moving target of a squad.
Cavenagh framed the current turbulence against the backdrop of the board’s arrival a year ago and the culture they say they are trying to reshape.
“When we came in around a year ago, our ambition was sustained winning and winning sustainably,” he said. “I understand we’re not there yet; I’m more optimistic now than I was a year ago.”
The numbers on the league table and the deficit in Europe tell one story. Cavenagh is trying to tell another: that the club is in the middle of a longer rebuild, one aimed at erasing what he sees as an ingrained acceptance of falling short.
“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 insisted. “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, though, is rarely a luxury at Ibrox. With the transfer clock ticking, a new manager bedding in, and European qualification on the line this week, Rangers are already being asked a familiar question: can they turn ambition into results before the season’s pressure really bites?
