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We’re Facing An Early Champions League Test Whether We’re Going To Ireland Or Norway.

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The Champions League draw has thrown up our first banana skin of the campaign; a trip either to Dundalk or to Rosenborg.

If we get past Linfield we’ll face the team that comes out of that particular tie.

I am hoping for Dundalk, most of us probably are, and not because it’s the easier tie. In fact, it’s hard to pick an “easier” tie from this.

I was talking to some of my guys last night about “the miracle of Dundalk.”

Their recent performances in Europe have been very impressive indeed. They’ve turned in some first rate displays. Nobody should expect an easy tie if it turns out to be them. They now have an incredible incentive to go to Norway and get a result … they are capable of it too.

They are a well organised team, completely transformed, and every player fights hard for everyone else. It would be an excellent tie, and Celtic fans would be made to feel more than welcome. This isn’t exactly Belfast on 12 July we’re talking about.

So hope for that one. The atmosphere will be great and it’s no more than Dundalk deserves for the way they’ve set themselves up over the last couple of years. This is the one they’ve been waiting for. I hope they can close the deal in Norway and set it up.

If Rosenborg do make it through – and they have the away goal advantage – then we all know roughly what it is we’ll be facing; a no-nonsense team, big, strong, fit and way ahead of us in preparation time. There is no way this could be regarded as other than a difficult tie.

We’d need to be sharp and well on our game to get through it.

This is a test. Did we want a test this early? It was always going to come.

The good thing is – if you can call it that – is that if we get through this tie we’re guaranteed to qualify for the Europa League group stages at worst.

The money is not Champions League cash, but we can make a good fist of it in that competition. Even accounting for last season’s exceptional domestic form people tend to forget that we’re a team in the early stages of development.

Draws like this help us in the long run.

If we can dispatch a team of Rosenborg’s quality this early – or a team as well put together as Dundalk – the signs will be good for what lies ahead.

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