Are Celtic glass ceilings about to be smashed with a win over Club Brugge?

Andrew H previews this week's crucial UCL tie

Expectation is a fickle paramour. Its warm embrace is divine. Any cause to feel betrayed by it, though, and devastation ensues.

Celtic are likely to send their supporters hurtling towards either end of these emotional extremities with how they fare - in their, so far, dreamy home patch  - against Club Brugge tomorrow night. There is ample reason to believe that we will be loved up, really as never before, by the conclusion of game no.5 in a Champions League campaign. But also there are, entirely understandably, nagging doubts. Put that down to the outcome possessing the potential to be seismic. 

Indeed, on that basis it is impossible not to ponder just how cheated you might feel in the event of the anticipated victory against the Belgian side failing to materialise. Little attention being paid to the fact Brugge sit only one point behind Brendan Rodgers’ men thanks to two victories in the 36 team set-up - the latest a 1-0 win in their own environs against Aston Villa.

If this sounds like catastrophising, then apologies. It is just the counter-balance to our team being in such pinch-me territory. To appearing, for all the world, to have it in them to make good on the promise writ large in the sweeping aside of RB Leipzig by a far-from-flattering 3-1 margin in the east end of Glasgow three weeks ago. A success that was the reward for, arguably, their finest footballing display against top tier opponents in more than two decades jousting at the elite level. 

This Celtic squad possess such attacking intent and assurance it requires you to be a contrarian, or the most Eyore-ish of fans, to deviate from the belief that the club will best Brugge as they did Leipzig. So let’s not be… and presume that 10 points will be Celtic’s haul in this revamped Champions League by the time 10 past 10 - let’s say - rolls around on Wednesday evening. 

If it is then Rodgers’ rampagers of 2024 will have no equal in this environment in a Celtic context. Imagine that. A team that, in February, few thought could overhaul Philippe Clement’s Rangers in their domestic top flight - yes, Clement’s Rangers! - by the end of November living high on the hob in the ultimate continental top flight.

Never mind that the permutations decree 10 points, with three of the the eight-game league programme remaining, would be sufficient to earn one of the last 16 play-off slots for the clubs finishing between ninth and 24th in the 36-team league format.

Small potatoes, in certain ways, compared to what the haul would mean for Celtic in terms of their personal development operating within the highest echelon of the European game. The club never accumulated 10 points across the first five games of the old six-game group format. Ah, but you say, Slovan Bratislava - stuffed 5-1 at Celtic Park in September - are only makeweights who would have never made one of those eight groups when the competition had only 32 teams subdivided into four-team sections. 

Fine. But Celtic featuring in such a foursome alongside Atalanta, Leipzig and Brugge would have been pretty standard - in certain years - for an old style group. And you know what they never did in any one of their 12 such campaigns? Take points from three consecutive matches. As they should by beating Brugge - on the back of the victory at home to Leipzig and the courageous scoreless draw against Atalanta in Bergamo. Or, if you want to frame those results differently, their first win over a German team in the Champions League, and only their fourth point away from home in the competition to a club from the big five leagues.

A win over Brugge would place Celtic on a trajectory in which they have never been on in the three decades-and-counting since the old European Champions Clubs’ Cup (as was its full title) was renamed and remade. It would open up the possibility of a top eight finish that would snare automatic qualification to the last 16 stage. Even if their next two games - away to Dinamo Zagreb, in a couple of weeks, and the hosting of Young Boys come late January - are no gimmes, a positive outcome tomorrow would give rise to the belief a 16-point total could be within the capabilities of Rodgers’ men. You really would be talking about Celtic breaking the glass ceiling over what seemed possible in the Champions League environs if they could rack up three straight victories in the competition. And were they to achieve that, the final night assignment pitting them against Aston Villa in Birmingham wouldn’t seem so daunting.

The draw was certainly kind to Celtic. And this new-look Champions League has undoubtedly been democratised for lower-pot residing clubs such as ours. Yet even allowing for those factors, the prospect of banking 10 points from their first five games was in the far outer reaches of what even the most bullish among the club faithful would have considered attainable. Now, dare it be said, even the doomiest of doom-merchants would concede that is probable. Nay, let’s go all in. Not probable but about to become reality. There are times to wrap your arms around expectation and clasp it tight, tight, tight.

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