Trying to bring the sharpness back to a team that has not had a game which mattered for several weeks while up against a team that is motivated by seeking to end up a cup hoodoo is an all too familiar scenario for Archie Knox.

As he considers the task facing Mark Warburton and his management team in the build-up to Saturday’s Scottish Cup final, then, the former Rangers assistant coach remembers only too well the circumstances which cost his side an unprecedented second successive domestic treble in 1994.

Rangers had cruised to their sixth title in a row and found themselves facing a Dundee United side that had a dreadful Hampden record, to the extent that there was talk of a weird curse on the cup returning to the city, dating back to it having been placed in an undertaker’s window when local rivals Dundee won the tournament in 1910.

They had lost six cup finals in the previous two decades under fabled boss Jim McLean – Knox was in the first of those teams in 1974 – and were now managed by Ivan Golac, a Yugoslav who was considered something of a comic character, however Knox knew the then favourites were in trouble long before the match itself.

“You always knew, no matter how much you did the training the same the edge just definitely dropped off immediately after you’d won the league,” he said.

“It’s not a case that you were out every night or anything like that, it’s just that you’ve built yourselves up to get to that to that finish, you’ve got there, there’s the relief of that, the wind down and then all of a sudden you’ve got to get yourself up to get to a good level again to contest a cup final.”

As Hibs seek to end their wait for their Holy Grail there is the different element, as compared with a United side that had finished 1993/94 in mid-table, that has been the Edinburgh club’s play-off schedule and all the emotional energy that has absorbed. Knox realises that both managements will consequently accentuate different factors.

“They’ll use it in whatever way they think’s for them,” he observed.

“Great to be playing and winning the games for Hibs and stuff like that; Rangers, that’s us we’re refreshed now, we’ve got everybody back fit, we’ve got everybody keyed up for the cup final.”

Whereas Hibs have already been to a Hampden final and lost this season, Rangers can, Knox reckons, also persuade themselves they have an advantage drawn from their last big match at the national stadium before they hit the end of season slump in league form which preceded their lengthy gap between competitive matches.

“The semi-final was probably their best performance of the season against Celtic you’d have thought, so there’s a capability in them for that and to win the major cup competition for Rangers… OK getting promotion was vital and all the rest of it, but to win the major cup competition these lads will see as a really big challenge,” he suggested.

Knox knows key figures in the two camps extremely well having worked with Alan Stubbs, the Hibs manager and Davie Weir, the Rangers second in command when he and Walter Smith moved to Everton and clearly likes and respects both.

“If they were all like them in terms of pros then you’d be fine. Keen to go into management and coaching, served their apprenticeships. Davie is still assistant but they’ve got their chance in coaching,” Knox observed.

“They are different guys, although when I see Davie now he’s totally different on the touchline to what he normally is. He’s right into these fourth officials now and I’d never have thought that.

“As a player, Stubbsy was more vocal. Davie would do it in a quieter way, if you like, but still got that message across. That serves them well in the early stages of their management careers.”

As to the psychology of this particular tie, then, he is sufficiently old school to be instinctively rather disdainful of one of the methods Stubbs has developed a reputation for pursuing.

“It’s those mind games, isn’t it?” Knox mused.

“Trying to wind people up like Mourinho and folk like that. He’ll maybe go in a bit more again as the build-up to the final goes on. You have to have that in you to try it. I could never see it in myself. It was all kind of straightforward.

“Your team was your mind games. If you thought your team was better than the opposition then you didn’t need to get involved in that type of thing. So whether they feel they have to do that to try and give them that extra lift, if you like, or put doubt in someone’s mind or whatever, I think people take that with a pinch of salt.”

Yet there is a wry grin as he is reminded that he also worked under Alex Ferguson who frequently engaged in such tactics, most famously when destabilising Kevin Keegan in the season that Newcastle United looked on course to beat Manchester United to the title and he acknowledges that managers are always looking for ways of getting one over the opposition.

“I can remember fine putting things up in the dressing room of what had been written in the papers or what a player had said,” he admitted.

“It didn’t matter if it was Aberdeen, Hearts or Celtic. The boys used to read it. If there was something controversial then you’d pin it up on the noticeboard and say: ‘Have a look and what he’s saying this morning.’ Maybe that was trying to get your guys wound up to get one over on them.

“There’s no doubt that, if you hit the spot, you can rile people. Keegan displayed it. You can be riled but you can’t show that it’s got to you.”

He believes, however, that over-use of such tricks can be counter-productive, though, while insisting they are unlikely to affect how players perform.

“If you’re doing it all the time I don’t think it has the effect if you’re trying to put one over on people by what you’re saying,” Knox asserted.

“Maybe that’s what I was doing pinning it up in the dressing room, trying to get your guys to say ‘you’ve got to get one over on them’ (but) it’s the actions of your boys on the pitch that matters. You can say what you want and try and wind people up. It might show in guys who react to it but I don’t think it has any effect on what your team is going to do.”

Archie Knox was speaking at a William Hill media event. William Hill is the proud sponsor of the Scottish Cup.