Scottish club Rangers accepts resignation of management team

GLASGOW, Scotland — Scottish club Rangers says it has accepted the resignation of manager Mark Warburton and two of his backroom staff, despite a representative of the trio making a late bid to alter their request to leave.

Rangers made the announcement in a statement late Friday.

There was confusion, however, with sections of the British media reporting that Warburton has said he has not stood down from his position.

Rangers said a representative of the management team advised the club early in the week that Warburton and his two staff members — assistant David Weir and head of recruitment Frank McParland — “wished to resign their positions and leave the club on condition that Rangers agreed to waive its rights to substantial compensation.”

Warburton has been linked with a move to second-tier English team Nottingham Forest.

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Rangers’ board agreed to accept the request, saying “it is important that Rangers has a football management team that wants to be at the club.”

Rangers said “the representative … subsequently attempted to alter the terms of what had been agreed in favour of the management team” but that Rangers’ board “decided not to agree to this additional request but to hold with the original agreement.”

The team is third in the Scottish Premiership — 27 points behind neighbour and fierce Glasgow rival Celtic — in its first season back in the top division following demotion to the bottom tier in 2012 because of financial mismanagement.

Warburton has been manager since June 2015.

The Associated Press