ALAN STUBBS’ first renewal of hostilities with Rangers since returning to Scottish football to take up the manager’s role at Hibernian gave a most enticing flavour of what was to come.

In his first competitive match in charge of the Easter Road side after leaving the coaching staff at Everton to go it alone last year, he travelled to Ibrox in the first round of the Petrofac Training Cup.

With the match tied at 1-1 with 11 minutes to play and his men slowly beginning to gain the upper hand, Danny Handling was ordered off for a challenge on David Templeton and the home side duly went on to secure victory in extra-time. No-one in the stadium could deny that Rangers got off the hook.

Stubbs described the decision to banish Handling from the field of play as “harsh”, an indisputable game changer. Asked to go into a little more detail on referee John Beaton’s contentious call, he offered a somewhat cryptic comment which almost certainly referred to his time spent at Celtic as a player between 1996 and 2001.

"I am not going to get into that one," he remarked. "I had five years of it."

In hindsight, that could well be looked upon as the moment the touchpaper was well and truly lit.

Stubbs, given his background across the city, was never likely to be given the warmest of welcomes back across the border from the Ibrox club and its supporters. Since then, though, their relationship has become progressively more fractious and is beginning to provide the most delicious sideshow as Hibernian endeavour to increase the pressure on Rangers at the head of the Ladbrokes Championship.

Ally McCoist, then the manager at Rangers, described some of Stubbs’ later comments over Handling’s sending-off as “laughable” and said he wouldn’t have a problem if his one-time adversary in Old Firm battle wanted to referee the next match between the teams himself.

Mark Warburton, McCoist’s successor, has been noticeably less jovial in his dealings with the 44-year-old.

His attempts to sign Scott Allan developed into something of a slanging match between the clubs and ended with the midfielder going to Celtic. Stubbs then stoked the flames further when stating that transforming the Glasgow side was a “very easy” job when there was a considerable amount of money to spend on much better players.

Warburton had a little nibble back. However, Stubbs, without doubt, is building a real head of steam with his squad and ended the Englishman’s 11-match winning run in the league earlier this month.

Just five points separate the sides. Since losing 1-0 at Ibrox in August, they have racked up 12 wins and a draw from their last 13 outings in all competitions. They are looking like credible contenders and certainly capable of asking questions from a Rangers side finding it progressively more difficult to bowl over the opposition the way they did at the initial stages of the campaign.

In a radio interview earlier this week, Stubbs expressed his view that the entire country is eager to see his improving squad push Rangers all the way. Certainly, it is his belief that the two matches left between the sides this term are likely to play a pivotal role in deciding the destination of the title.

“If you are going on current form and the way we are getting results against the other teams, they are starting to look like they could become very crucial,” he said.

“I will say that I do think there are going to be some twists and turns along the way when you are getting to the wintertime with the weather and the pitches starting to deteriorate.

“We are just happy we are in good form. I think everybody wants this. I don’t think anybody wants a runaway leader and all we have done is give ourselves a fighting chance.”

Stubbs remains consistent in his view that Rangers must remain favourites because of the level of finance Warburton has at his disposal. Just recently, he stated that his view that it is “at least four times bigger” than the budget he is working with in Edinburgh.

For all that, he is keen to point out that he harbours no obsession with Rangers.

“Our focus is not Rangers,” he said. “Our focus is us.

“If you are looking at it in cold daylight, we have got an uphill battle this season to stay close to Rangers with their resources and everything.

“However, we feel, considering those resources, we are not that far away from them. We do not think there is a huge gap between both teams.

“They have improved significantly from last season, but so have we.

“I think we have got, potentially, some of the most exciting talent in Scotland right now.”

What, then, of that move Rangers made for Allan, which continues to cause a degree of ill-feeling between the sides? It was a transfer that the Rangers chairman, Dave King, insists he was encouraged to make by the Easter Road club before having three separate offers rebuffed.

“It wasn’t the way we wanted to portray it all,” Stubbs told RockSport Radio. “We wanted it to be done professionally and, from the very outset, we set our stall out.

“Our decision from day one was that we would not sell to Rangers – purely because, if we had any aspirations of trying to be successful this season, we could not allow our best player at that time to go to one of our biggest rivals.”

Stubbs certainly isn’t scared to go into battle and he is right. Thank heavens, with Celtic starting to streak away in the Premiership, we have a challenge to Rangers in the league below with so many juicy little sub-plots.