QPR boss Mark Warburton has issued a response to the regular messages he gets from Rangers fans calling him a "snake" for his Ibrox exit, offering his side of the story and claiming that "no one would walk out on" the Scottish club. 

Warburton took charge of the Glasgow club in June 2015 but in February 2017, it was announced that the Ibrox outfit had accepted his resignation – alongside that of assistant David Weir and head of recruitment Frank McParland.

Speaking on the Sacked In The Morning podcast this week, the 59-year-old opened up about the way he left the club.

He said: "I literally turned on Sky Sports and I saw this yellow headline.

"My phone started jumping. I'm thinking, what's this? 'Mark Warburton resigns as Rangers manager'.

"I phoned [Rangers assistant manager at the time] Davie Weir, 'Davie, I think I've just been sacked. He said, 'so have I' and I said, 'why is that?'

"And I looked at the television again and it said: 'David Weir also resigns'. Then I get a text saying 'please look at your email account, we accept your resignation'. I have no idea what you're talking about. And that was it."

Warburton revealed that he regularly gets messages calling him a "snake" for the manner in which he left Ibrox and offered a response to those fans that are clearly still frustrated.

He said: "No-one would walk out on Rangers. Who in their right mind would walk out on one of the big two [in Glasgow]?

"Especially, when you're sitting in second [in the Premiership] ahead of a cup match… but that's how we found out. We found out that we'd resigned. To this day it eats away.

"I'm very fortunate that I have a good job and there's not a lot of jobs in football; we're very privileged to manage clubs like Nottingham Forest and Brentford beforehand and now to be at QPR for three years. I'm now the third-longest-serving manager in the [English Championship], bizarrely.

"But that [Rangers exit] eats away at you because it's such a privileged position to be manager of a club of that stature. And I felt, not in an arrogant way, that we were doing an OK job, the squad was young.

"The only way we were going to close that gap [on Celtic] was through money and we never had the money."

The Scottish club have since returned to success under Steven Gerrard and are enjoying a Europa League run with Giovanni van Bronckhorst at the helm.

Warburton, meanwhile, has helped QPR move from a club battling relegation amid tight finances to a side battling for a play-off place in 2021/22.

The Verdict

The regular messages Warburton has received from Rangers fans since his 2017 exit must be particularly frustrating for the English coach given the way it seems things actually played out.

With that in mind, it's good that he's finally had the chance to get his side of the story across and offer a response to those fans still frustrated by the situation.

The Ibrox outfit and the 59-year-old are now enjoying success so it appears going their separate ways has worked for both but you really have to question the way he was treated by the Scottish club.

Not only the way they twisted things but the manner in which he discovered he was out of a job is not acceptable at any level of sport.