Rangers Chairman Calls Summer Business Clunky Amid Squad Rebuild
Rangers chairman Andrew Cavenagh did not bother dressing it up. Three games into a new season, one point on the board, a Europa League tie hanging in the balance – and he stood in front of shareholders in Glasgow and called the club’s summer business “clunky”.
The room knew exactly what he meant.
Transfer drive in a race against the clock
Rangers have already brought in nine players under new manager Derek McInnes, but Cavenagh made it clear the rebuild is far from finished. He expects “three to five” more arrivals before the transfer window closes, with outgoings likely as the squad is reshaped on the fly.
“I don’t like putting a number on it,” he admitted, before doing precisely that. The message, though, was unmistakable: Rangers are not yet the team the board thought they would be by mid-August.
The timing is brutal. A club that set its sights on “sustained winning and winning sustainably” finds itself juggling recruitment with high-stakes fixtures. Two league games have yielded a single point. In Europe, a 2-1 first-leg defeat away to Jagiellonia Bialystok leaves their Europa League third qualifying round tie on a knife-edge.
“It sucks that we have to play a number of important games before the window closes,” Cavenagh said, “but that’s how it works.” No excuses, just the reality of a squad still being bolted together while the season is already moving at full speed.
Culture change, not quick fixes
Cavenagh spoke candidly about the mindset he and his fellow investors found when they arrived at Ibrox around a year ago. Finishing second – and sometimes worse – had, in his words, been “seeping into every corner of this club”.
They came in to rip that out. That kind of cultural surgery, he warned, does not happen overnight.
“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. “I understand we’re not there yet; I’m more optimistic now than I was a year ago.”
The optimism rests on more than transfer numbers. It rests on the man in the dugout.
Why Rangers chose a ‘Klopp-style’ McInnes
Chief executive Jim Gillespie, sitting alongside Cavenagh and shareholder Paraag Marathe, was pressed on the decision to appoint McInnes, who came within touching distance of the title with Heart of Midlothian last season.
His answer was revealing.
“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 at Ibrox demands courage, energy and relentless pressure. It also demands players who can execute it. That, ultimately, is why Cavenagh is talking about up to five more signings with the season already under way.
McInnes has been left frustrated by Rangers’ poor start, and injuries have not helped – including to striker Chermiti, after the club rejected a bid for him. The squad looks like a work in progress because it is one.
European jeopardy and a VAR flashpoint
There is no time for self-pity. On Thursday, Rangers host Jagiellonia in the second leg, needing to overturn that 2-1 deficit to keep their Europa League hopes alive. The reward for progress would be a play-off against either Northern Irish champions Larne or Iberia Tbilisi of Georgia.
Drop out now, and the early-season narrative shifts from “clunky” to something far more unforgiving.
Domestically, frustration has already spilled over into the refereeing debate. Gillespie confirmed the club has asked the SFA for clarification over the VAR intervention that led to Hibernian’s penalty in Sunday’s 2-1 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.”
His concern went beyond a single decision. “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.”
The implication was sharp: standards must rise, on the pitch and in the officials’ room.
A club on the clock
So Rangers move into a pivotal fortnight with a squad still under construction, a manager tasked with imposing a high-intensity style, and a board publicly demanding a shift from second-best to serial winners.
Important games are arriving faster than new signings. The chairman is talking about culture, the chief executive about style, the manager about results.
The question now is simple: can Rangers turn “clunky” into convincing before the season’s early damage becomes something far harder to repair?
