Champions League Prospects

Andrew H on whether Celtic might actually make an impression

What follows in this dissection of Celtic’s Champions League prospects next season no doubt could make it screenshot/bookmark worthy to any Rangers brethren that might happen to be casting their eyes over it (And anyone in that bracket, we thank you for your interest).

For, at the risk of ostrich-like neck sticking out, or being open up to becoming a helpless hostage to fortune, the complete revamp of club football’s most prestigious competition enhances the chances Celtic could make an actual impression in it. As, frankly, has eluded them since Neil Lennon led the club to the last 16…all of the 13 years, and five tilts ago.

You would require to have been living in a hermetically-sealed shed on the dark side of the moon not to know that the Champions League will be nothing like the Champions League as we have known it from 2024-25. That as well as the group stage now franchising 36 clubs - up from 32 - all of these teams will compete in a solitary, big blob of a league, as opposed to being stratified across eight sections. Each participant playing eight different teams, four at home and four away, to determine placings. A shakedown resulting in the top eight going through automatically to the last 16, while the clubs placed from nine to 24 face off in home-and-away play-off ties to produce the other eight teams for the knock-out stage. A format that will be replicated in the Europa League and Conference League and which ends any drop-downs between the various competitions.