Mark Warburton has insisted he would never have resigned from Rangers as he blasted his Ibrox departure as being handled "absolutely appallingly".
The former Rangers manager left the club in February 2017 alongside assistant Davie Weir and head of recruitment Frank McParland.
A club statement at the time suggested the trio had resigned from roles at the club, however, Warburton has remained unmoved on his position that no resignation was ever tendered.
Instead, the manager has claimed he discovered he had been "sacked" while watching Sky Sports News.
Discussing his confusing exit from Rangers on the Scotscore podcast, Warburton suggested his departure was down to "Celtic's unbeaten form".
And Warburton remains adamant he would "never, ever walk away from a club like Rangers".
He said: "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 and 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, I phone Davie Weir and say, 'I think I've just been sacked' and Davie Weir says, 'So have I.'
Mark Warburton tells me what REALLY happened with his departure from Rangers 👇 Link to the full interview 🎙️ - https://t.co/GH3bvVHWKY pic.twitter.com/ENlnvOZjlr
— Scott Bradley (@ScottBradleyX) November 14, 2023
"I said, 'What do you mean?' Then I 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, absolutely not. I was sacked from Rangers. We would never, ever walk away from a club like Rangers. Ever.
"So that was the frustration, that people suggested we had resigned. Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
"It was handled absolutely appallingly at the time. You would never walk away from a club like Rangers and we had to deal with it."
The former West Ham coach also explained his reasoning against taking up legal issue with his departure from the club.
Warburton is certain he would have won any case over his departure but claims he avoided going down the legal route to protect his reputation and allow him to keep working.
"You get all the media saying, well, sue the club," he said. "First of all, you don't get embroiled in a court case because you can't work - no one is going to touch you while it's going on. There are different legal laws about English lawyers in Scottish courts compared to the other way around etc. And you are going to go down that legal route to try and win some money, but your reputation could be in tatters because you've gone legal.
"Everyone said, 'He must be guilty, he must have resigned' because he is not going down the legal route. What do you win by the legal route? Would we have won the case? Absolutely.
"I said to someone at the time, if the club could show Davie or I a phone call, an email, a letter, anything at all to suggest that we had resigned then I would absolutely pay all your legal costs - there was nothing because we never did.
"It was just a great shame. We had a really good relationship, we were halfway into working it. To end in that way, was very painful and very bitter. I just felt it was unnecessary because it was purely because of Celtic's unbeaten form.
"But at the end of the day, it was a privilege to manage Rangers and that will never change. I haven't been back to Ibrox since then by the way. I want to go back obviously, but it's about doing it at the right time.
"But to be clear, we would never have resigned from a club like Rangers."
