FORMER Rangers manager Mark Warburton has admitted that his departure from Ibrox 'eats away' at him to this very day.

The Englishman, now coaching Queens Park Rangers south of the border, appeared on the Sacked In The Morning podcast where he discussed his controverial exit from the Glasgow club.

In 2017, Warburton left under a cloud after the club claimed he had resigned from his position - something he has always disputed - and he admits that the abrupt end to his time in Scotland still rankles.

"No one would walk out on Rangers," he said. "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."

Warburton added that he felt the club were in a fairly good position at the time of his departure, admitting that the only way he thought the team could catch Brendan Rodgers' Celtic was with a cash injection from the board.

He continued: "I felt, not in an arrogant way, that we were doing an okay 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."