Rangers have come a long way in a short time.
When Dave King and his brethren seized control of the club in 2015, one of the first jobs they had to do was appoint a manager capable of getting us back into the top flight and instilling a style of play that would excite the fans.
Mark Warburton arrived with a rising reputation, an unorthodox career that saw him go from being a broker in the City of London to becoming boss of a Brentford team that had come tantalisingly close to promotion from the Championship, he seemed like the right man, at the right time.
With him, on a budget, he brought in a variety of journeymen and promising youngsters in a squad that was in desperate need of a major overhaul. Only Kenny Miller, Lee Wallace and Barry McKay really making any real contribution from the previous members, although Dean Shiels, Nicky Clark and Nicky Law were also still involved.
His first season was, almost, perfect. Attractive football returned to Ibrox, the championship title was delivered early and we should have won the Scottish Cup, the real sliding doors moment on his Rangers career. Speaking on the Sacked in the Morning podcast, the QPR gaffer explained that his exit later the following the season still rankles with him:
“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.”
I have to admit that, despite being so far behind Celtic, I was one fan who backed Warburton to stay and get us moving in the right direction again. That summer though – when we were promoted to the Premiership – we had the right idea with recruitment but went about it the wrong way.
If Warburton had been backed properly and been allowed to sign experienced players to add quality to a promising squad instead of gambling with Phillipe Senderos, Niko Kranjcar and Joey Barton, we might have seen progression instead of regression.
He seems to have learned from his mistakes – eventually – when it comes to setting up a defence and defending set pieces, and there’s an element of “what could’ve been” about Warburton’s time at Rangers.
One thing is for certain, we’ll never truly know how or what happened when his departure was so amateurishly announced.