IT is perhaps only natural that anyone schooled in the game by Sir Alex Ferguson would possess an unshakeable belief in the power of psychological warfare within football.

When it came to mind games, there were few to match up to Fergie.

He knew how to turn the screw on his players at Aberdeen, famously branding them “a disgrace” on live television in the aftermath of winning the Scottish Cup against Rangers. He developed a siege mentality within his squad, placing the press at the centre of a west coast mafia out to deny them success.

Referees dreaded going to Pittodrie and the rest of Scottish football dreaded Aberdeen coming to visit. Europe eventually did too.

Alex McLeish was at the centre of it all, growing from a raw teenager into the third most-capped player in the history of the Scottish national team. By the time he had developed into a manager in his own right, Ferguson was still pushing rivals in England such as Kevin Keegan and Rafael Benitez to breaking point with carefully-delivered broadsides guaranteed to raise the temperature at exactly the right time.

A similar scenario is playing out right now with two of his former clubs, Rangers and Hibernian, as they joust for the Ladbrokes Championship.

Alan Stubbs gives the impression of a man having fun with Mark Warburton. He was quoted as claiming the job at Ibrox was “very easy” and that the Ibrox club should lead the league table as their budget is “at least four times bigger” than that in existence at Easter Road.

Both remarks elicited a response from a Rangers manager doing his best to pretend, in public, that he is not paying the slightest notice to a Hibernian side that has won 14 games out of 15 and sits just three points behind. One can only guess what Warburton has made of Stubbs’ insistence earlier this week that his team has, whatever may be said within Murray Park, got inside the heads of the Rangers staff.

McLeish is intrigued by it all. What’s more, he does not believe it should be written off as mere froth, a spot of pantomime in what Stubbs concedes is an entertainment business. For the former Aston Villa and Birmingham City manager, mind games are an integral part of top-level sport.

“It is good when you are the underdog,” said McLeish. “I can see why Stubbsy is going down that road.

“He is probably quite relaxed. When you are the favourite, you probably have that tension all the time and I think Stubbsy is trying to play a wee game.

“So far, I think Mark has been quite cool, but talk about bigger budgets and Rangers being an easy job always has the potential to hit some raw nerves.

“There is pressure there no matter the budget and it is not easy to win league titles.

“Stubbsy has also got to show he can cut the mustard in his first managerial role and this kind of thing is all part of the game, an important part.

“I gave an opinion recently about a domestic treble not being enough in the current climate for Celtic and I think Ronny Deila felt I was piling pressure on him. I was just speaking from the perspective of someone with experience of what is expected of an Old Firm manager and I wouldn’t take it back.

“Indeed, John Collins probably started the ball rolling by saying that it was difficult for Celtic to play in Europe because of the weakness of the Scottish league.”

And McLeish believes that use of comments from other managers as a motivational tool should not be underestimated.

“How many times have you heard someone say: ‘He’s just done my team talk for me’?,” he pointed out. “Of course, you can ask how often all this stuff works.

“The law of averages probably suggests it is 50-50, but I think you have to believe that it gives your players a bit more motivation.

“It is about marginal gains when it comes to trying to get one over on the opposition.”

It was certainly an important part of the dynamic at Pittodrie as McLeish and his Aberdeen team-mates developed into a side capable of winning European trophies against the odds.

“Fergie was a master of it,” he said. “He would go on about the Glasgow press being a mafia and it got us going.

“It is hard to quantify just how much it brought to that Aberdeen team. I don’t think we knew, consciously, how important it all was, but he certainly knew it was working. There were all kinds of subtle little things at play.

“When we went to Ibrox or Parkhead, for example, we were under orders to take quick free-kicks and throw-ins.

“We were stunned by the reaction that got. We saw shock on the faces of the Rangers and Celtic players and that caused us to start really believing in everything the manager said.”

McLeish always tried to defuse the kind of war of words that newspapermen love to get their teeth into. Warburton has

“I know a lot of managers respond to other managers in England. You see Jose (Mourinho) doing it quite a lot. I never felt it was my game and tried to be in control of my emotions.

“Stubbsy and Mark are playing out a wee psychological thriller between themselves at the moment, handling it in their own different ways.”