Warburton suggests Stubbs ‘keeps his mouth shut’

RANGERS manager Mark Warburton last night told Hibernian manager Alan Stubbs to “keep his mouth shut” after he had claimed that the former had a “very easy” job in rebuilding his side due to the money he had to spend at Ibrox.

Mark Warburton: Mind games? Picture: SNS

Warburton had been informed of Stubbs’ comments on Hibs TV and, following his side’s comfortable 2-0 victory over Ayr United in the Petrofac Training Cup, he took issue with them.

His team thrashed Hibs 6-2 at Easter Road in the previous round and they face each other in Glasgow on Championship business this weekend.

Stubbs had already irked Warburton last weekend when he claimed that Rangers had attempted to prise midfielder Scott Allan away from Celtic with a last-ditch secret meeting with the player and his latest comments did not go down well.

“I heard that,” he said. “Clearly, it must be easy managing Manchester United and Real Madrid, then, I guess.

“I would suggest that any manager without the facts keeps his mouth shut and concentrates on his own club and doesn’t worry about ours. That’s the key point for me. Right now we are very respectful to every other club and every other manager.

“So, unless you know any facts that I don’t know, concentrate on your own team and not ours. I know what we’ve spent and [what Stubbs claimed] is a complete fallacy.

“Is it mind games? I’m not the brightest man in the world but it’ll take a lot more than that to wind me up, that’s for sure.”

As for Rangers’ display at Somerset Park, Warburton expressed satisfaction but claimed that the best is yet to come.

“It was a difficult game but we got the result and there were a lot of positives to take from it,” he said.

“We were sloppy second half, not good enough in possession and didn’t really commit to the ball and get as tight as we should have done.

“But the beauty of this team is that they’re keen to learn and they will learn. We scored some good goals and had some good chances first half.

“There were some good saves from their ’keeper but we should have been more than two ahead. But they had two or three good chances in the second half when we were sloppy and that can’t happen.”