Rather like peering out into the back court of a Leith tenement on a good drying day, Alan Stubbs can see plenty of clean sheets.

His Hibernian side won't be assuming the moniker of 'Scrooge' just yet but their increasingly uncharitable approach to dishing out goals has left Stubbs eagerly counting up the points, and the plaudits, like a fingerless glove-wearing miser.

If they keep Livingston at bay tonight, then it will be five clean sheets in a row ... and that hasn't been achieved by the Easter Road club since 1991.

Stubbs is not one for looking back, of course. It's onwards and upwards for an upwardly mobile Hibernian who have been galvanised under the Englishman's stewardship after sinking to the kind of depths that almost began negotiations on a re-location from Auld Reekie to Atlantis.

This new buoyancy had led to a 13 game unbeaten run en route to second place in the SPFL Championship and progression into the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup. Stubbs, the former Bolton Wanderers, Celtic and Everton centre back, may have posed for the cameras yesterday as he picked up his manager of the month award but this sequence of success has been a real team effort.

"It's great to receive recognition but for me the award is designated to all the staff and everyone behind the scenes because they deserve it as much as what I do," said Stubbs who, as a former defender, will especially savour the weeks that go by without a dent to the goals against column. "There's been a collective pull towards not conceding goals because we know we have got really good attacking options. We know we can be very good but it is getting the balance right between attack and defence. Defending starts from the front and when you keep the ball from the opposition, you have a greater chance of keeping the ball away from your own goal. One of the main reasons is that people know their jobs. We can't carry passengers. It isn't rocket science."

Scottish fitba', meanwhile, is hardly an exact science but the Stubbs experiment continues to reap the rewards as Hibernian strive to return to the top flight at the first time of asking. Having lost four of his first seven league games in charge, Stubbs never wavered. For a man who has beaten cancer twice, a few reversals during a transitional period at a new club was hardly going to worry him. Hailing from the same Merseyside town of Kirkby that produced former world boxing champion, John Conteh, you could say that Stubbs has rolled with the punches down the years. "Looking at it in a strange way, the defeats made the players realise what the division was all about," said Stubbs. "They knew they weren't going to get time to play and they needed more steeliness and determination."

Resolve and spirit are very much character traits that have defined Stubbs's career, and his life, and it seems to be seeping through to his players. "Listening to him talk, you can tell he played at a high level and won things as a player and he's clearly hungry to do that as a manager," said Scott Robertson, the Hibs midfielder. "He's trying to promote that sense in to us and when we go out there we have a mentality that we will win every game. It's rubbing off."

It's 20 years now since Stubbs skippered Bolton through an eventful and ultimately triumphant 1994/95 campaign in which the Lancashire side, managed by the Scot, Bruce Rioch, reached the League Cup final - they would lose 2-1 to Liverpool - and go on to secure promotion to the Premier League with a 4-3 win over Reading in a barnstorming play-off final at Wembley.

Two decades on, Stubbs finds himself in something of a similar position as the manager of a second-tier side destined for the play-offs and on the brink of a cup final appearance.

"There are similarities in the group of players," added Stubbs, as he compared the Bolton of yesteryear with the Hibernian of today. "The team spirit at Bolton was great, there was a real bond among the group, and you can see that here. They are a great bunch of lads and there are no prima-donnas among them. They each know their roles and how valuable they are to the team so, from that point of view, there are comparisons. There is ability as well. It's fine having good teams but I think we have ability and the potential to get even better. We have boys who have not reached their prime and are still progressing and learning and we have players with energy and knowledge. It is a good balance."

It is a balancing act that Stubbs is relishing.