Mark Warburton’s future as Rangers manager was thrown into turmoil on Friday after he denied the Scottish Premiership club’s claim that he had resigned.

Warburton had been under pressure amid growing unrest at Rangers’ failure to mount a strong challenge for the title and it appeared his two-year reign was over when the Glasgow giants announced his resignation.

Mark Warburton

“Rangers has accepted the resignations of manager Mark Warburton, assistant manager David Weir and the Club’s head of recruitment Frank McParland,” a statement on the club’s website read.

“At a meeting with the management team’s representative earlier this week the Club were advised that Mr Warburton, Mr Weir and Mr McParland wished to resign their positions and leave the Club on condition that Rangers agreed to waive its rights to substantial compensation.”

But less than an hour after that revelation, it emerged that Warburton denied he had handed in his resignation and the 54-year-old Englishman was reported to be consulting his legal team.

Warburton told BBC Scotland he was unaware of the statement, which came just hours after he had taken training with the Rangers squad.

He had also given a ringing endorsement to McParland earlier on Friday following speculation the head of recruitment was poised to quit.

Yet Rangers, who briefly took their statement down before putting it back on the website, were adamant Warburton and his team wanted to leave, and in any case had fallen short of the club’s expectations.

“It is important that Rangers has a football management team that wants to be at the club and that the board believes can take the club forward to meet our stated ambition to return to being the number one club in Scotland. We are clearly short of where we expected to be at this time,” the statement read.

“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.

“Mr Warburton, Mr Weir, and Mr McParland have therefore been notified in writing that their notices of termination have been accepted.

“The board is very appreciative of the good work previously done by the management team but believes it had no alternative. Our club must come first and absolute commitment is essential.”

Former Brentford boss Warburton led Rangers to promotion from the Scottish second tier last season.

But Rangers have been less dominant on their return to the top-flight and they trail leaders Celtic by 27 points after winning just one of their last five league matches.

A recent 2-1 home defeat against Celtic and a 4-1 thrashing at Hearts had put Warburton’s job security under the spotlight ahead of Sunday’s Scottish Cup fifth round clash with Morton.

Rangers said under-20s coach Graeme Murty would pick the team for the Morton fixture, but Warburton’s insistence that he hasn’t quit could change that.