GOING FOR 55

My first thought was... who the hell did that?

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I walked down tunnel. The sun was shining, it looked magnificent. Then I look up and see this huge display...

SAYS MARK WARBURTON

— I would say conservatively five times more. In any other league with that scenario, you've got no chance.

"What really peed me off was that people would say to me, 'Oh, you don't know what's expected at Rangers. You don't understand the club. You don't know we have to win every game'.

"Of course I did! Why would I not know that? They spoke about it as if I was totally ignorant, which I found really, really frustrating.

"I knew the expectation and I knew what was involved. I think we delivered on that in the first season."

While Rodgers tooled up for Rangers' return by signing Dembele one of the hottest young talents in Europe at the time and former Manchester City winger Scott Sinclair, Warburton had to wheel and deal.

Clint Hill, then 37, and a 31-year-old Niko Kranjcar arrived on frees.

But the former Premier League stars' legs had long slowed past the point where they could match the pace being set by Rodgers' red-hot Celts.

Then, of course, there was a certain Joey Barton.

He arrived and immediately aimed a sneering, dismissive dig at the man he was expected to square up to.

"He ain't in my league. He is nowhere the level I am as a player," spat the controversial Scouser in reference to Celtic skipper Scott Brown.

Of course, those words were forced straight back down his throat on a mortifying afternoon at Parkhead.

"It just didn't work out," said Warburton as he looked back on the Barton signing, an ill-judged experiment that soon blew up with a training ground bust-up in the wake of that 5-1 derby demolition job.

"I'm not going to sit here and criticise Joey, that's not my intention at all. But very quickly you see a couple of social media posts and stuff.