Mark Warburton’s time at Rangers has ended in confusion after the club released a statement on Friday claiming to have accepted the manager’s resignation – despite Warburton denying he had stepped down from his role.

In a long statement on the Rangers website the club claim that Warburton had approached them seeking an agreement that any right to compensation would be waived should he and his management team – David Weir and Frank McParland – choose to switch clubs.

The 54-year-old had been linked with the vacant position as Nottingham Forest manager but yesterday Forest confirmed that their interim co-managers Gary Brazil and Jack Lester would remain in charge until the end of the season.

Now Rangers have ended Warburton’s time at the club by announcing his departure.

“Rangers has accepted the resignations of manager Mark Warburton, assistant manager David Weir and the club’s head of recruitment Frank McParland,” the statement 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 on condition that Rangers agreed to waive its rights to substantial compensation.

“Rangers’ agreement to waive compensation would assist the management team to join another club. This compensation amount was agreed when Rangers significantly improved Mr Warburton and Mr Weir’s financial arrangements before the start of this season.”

Warburton’s relationship with the Rangers chairman, Dave King, has become increasingly strained in recent weeks. The statement added that it was important for the club’s board that their manager wanted to be at the club and was dedicated to taking the team back to the Scottish title.

“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.”

Rangers’ under-20s coach, Graeme Murty, will take interim charge of the team for the cup tie with Greenock Morton on Sunday.

Warburton is a little more than 18 months into the job with the team third in the Scottish Premiership, with almost no possibility of catching the league leaders, Celtic, who are 27 points clear.

Warburton had enjoyed a successful first season winning promotion to the Scottish Premiership and going close in the Scottish Cup, and was rewarded with a contract extension last summer taking his deal to 2019.

However, despite some positive results, his second season has been a struggle. Rangers were thrashed by Celtic in the campaign’s opening Old Firm derby, while the signing of Joey Barton proved a mistake on the field and a major distraction off it, culminating in the midfielder’s contract being terminated in November.

The former Nottingham Forest manager Billy Davies, who started his playing career at Rangers, is a possible replacement, as are St Johnstone’s Tommy Wright and Aberdeen’s Derek McInnes.