Mark Warburton decries Rangers exit as 'bitter and unnecessary' insisting he would NEVER have walked away

Mark Warburton has opened up on his chaotic Rangers departure, insisting he and assistant Davie Weir would never resign and described their Ibrox exit as "bitter, painful and unnecessary."

Confusion reigned in February 2017 when reports emerged that Warburton, Weir and head scout Frank McParland had resigned. That was denied by the English boss at the time, but either way his spell in Govan was over after leading Gers back to the Scottish Premiership. But he soon found himself trailing an unbeaten Celtic by 19 points, although felt he should have been allowed to continue his work and would have done had the Hoops not been so relentless.

Speaking on his departure, Warburton told the Scotscore podcast: "I'll never say anything derogatory about the club, you know that. I was lying on my sofa watching a game. It was five to nine and I'll never forget this, it was burned on my brain: my phone started jumping a little bit.

"I got an email from Stewart (Robertson) saying: 'Please check your email. It's a minute to nine on a Friday night, the night before a game. So I'm going to watch a bit of the news, do a bit of paperwork and go to bed.

"I look over and purely by chance I'm on Sky Sports and on the yellow ticker tape I see 'Mark Warburton resigns from Rangers.' You know the double take?

"My phone's now jumping and I phone Davie Weird and say: 'I think I've just been sacked' and Davie Weir says: 'So have I.'

"I said: 'what do you mean?' Then look up and it says David Weir has resigned from Rangers.

"So I try to phone the powers that be and no-one picks your calls up. My agent called up to ask what was going on and I had no idea. 'Apparently I've resigned' and he has no idea what I'm talking about.

"So it a nutshell,