Rangers fans poke fun at Mark Warburton over Rangers anniversary

Mark Warburton left Rangers in February 2017, but is still in charge according to his LinkedIn account. Picture: SNS/Rob Casey

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Users of the online professional network who were connected with the former Gers boss were asked to ‘Congratulate Mark Warburton on their work anniversary’ with the 55-year-old ‘celebrating 3 years at Glasgow Rangers FC’. It prompted much amusement among Rangers fans considering the complexities of his departure.

Warburton, who was most recently managing Nottingham Forest, spent less than two years at Ibrox, leading Rangers from the Championship to the Premiership and the club to their last success over Celtic, in the 2016 Scottish Cup semi-final.

The former Brentford boss was relieved of his Rangers duties in bizarre circumstances in February 2017. Warburton told The Times in March this year that he only found out he and assistant Davie Weir had departed the club when he was watching Sky Sports News on a Friday night.

“I still don’t really know what happened,” he said. “I was watching Sky Sports and it came up on the yellow tickertape, ‘Mark Warburton resigns his position as manager of Rangers’. That was it. I phoned David Weir and said, ‘I think I’ve just been sacked’, and he said, ‘So do I because my name’s on the TV as well!’ We didn’t know anything about it, but soon got an email from the club saying, ‘We accept your resignation’.”

Rangers, in their statement confirming the management’ team’s departure, said that the coaching team’s representative “had wished to resign their positions and leave the club on condition that Rangers agreed to waive its rights to substantial compensation. Rangers’ agreement to waive compensation would assist the management team to join another club”, believed to be Nottingham Forest.

The club added: “The representative acting for the management team subsequently attempted to alter the terms of what had been agreed in favour of the management team. A further board meeting was held this afternoon to discuss this and it was decided not to agree to this additional request but to hold with the original agreement.”

The duo, as well as head of recruitment Frank McParland were shown the door with Portuguese manager Pedro Caixinha coming in as replacement. Warburton and Weir would take over at Forest the following month.