Nicky Law has expressed sympathy for the former Rangers team-mates who found out that their contracts with the club would not be renewed through the media.
Kris Boyd, Ian Black and Ricky Foster have all expressed their dismay at their treatment, and striker Boyd in particular has spoken out against disparaging comments made by Dave King about he and outgoing captain Lee McCulloch, believing the new Rangers chairman to have made the pair scapegoats for the team's failure to win promotion to the Premiership.
Law, who remains a fixture in the Ibrox midfield, stopped short of criticising the hierarchy for their handling of the players following a desperately disappointing Championship campaign, but he admitted that he understood why some of his former colleagues had chosen to speak out after failing to receive any communication from Rangers following the expiry of their contracts.
He said: "Everyone that left the club, I'd like to think they were friends of mine, they're people I'd shared a dressing room with for two years. They're all good guys and they're all good pros. They've came out and spoken and they're free to do so, of course they are, and it's obviously difficult for me to say too much as I'm still at the club.
"You can maybe understand though that they might be upset because that's not usually how you would find out you were leaving a club. So it obviously leaves a bitter taste for those boys, and probably more so for the older boys like Jig [McCulloch], who has given fantastic service to the club, captained the club for three years and of course is Rangers through and through. So I'm sure it would have hurt.
"I don't know the ins and outs of it too well, so it's difficult for me to comment too much, but the boys have come out and said what they have said, and from their point of view they will be disappointed and probably hurt by it."
If the way the release of the aforementioned players was handled can be viewed as beneath the standards once expected of Rangers, Law is sure that new manager Mark Warburton is the man to raise the bar back to where it once was, at least in terms of what is expected of the players on the football side.
"Standards are very high at the minute and I wouldn't imagine they will be dropping," Law said. "I couldn't see this manager allowing that to happen. Hopefully by the end of the season we'll have done the job and we'll have won the league."
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