Going into the weekend’s game, Brendan Rodgers is still Celtic’s biggest asset.

Assume we go into the game this weekend with pretty much the same first team to choose from as before, because we shouldn’t expect any new players to be integrated straight away and Rodgers doesn’t like taking those sorts of chances. His biggest decision will revolve around what the midfield looks like. Let’s presume, for a moment, that circumstances force him to stick with the tried and tested, leaving any new signings on the subs bench.

Who will we be looking at in the middle of the park? On the surface, it seems like an easy call—Bernardo comes in for O’Riley, and there you have it. But I wonder if Brendan, who doesn’t like doing what people expect, might throw us a curveball. He’s been experimenting with various things over the summer. Although a totally different formation hasn’t been one of those experiments, I wonder if we might see something unexpected.

It’s classic Rodgers to present the opposition with one idea and then confront them on match day with an entirely different picture. We do have options in midfield that allow us to shake things up a bit—not great options, perhaps, given the circumstances of a game like this, but options nonetheless. I don’t think Holm is remotely ready, but he’s still with us. Then there’s Iwata, If he’s still at the club, you have to assume that the manager still sees him as part of the first-team squad because he’s cleared out a lot of players in this window and he definitely does rate that lad.

I like Iwata a lot. He plays defensively, in that little hole where a lot of the hard graft is done. It is currently occupied by Callum McGregor. McGregor has been pushing forward with more regularity in the last couple of games, which is clearly something the manager has been working on. That seems to be part of a plan to replace some of O’Riley’s contributions to the team. Callum’s been getting goals, Hatate’s been getting goals, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see a different holding midfielder being used to unleash Callum properly in this fixture—at least until the new signings have spent a bit longer at the club.

And if that seems like high-risk stuff, what if the boss decides to go with two central midfielders and starts the match with two strikers?

We don’t know what kind of state the Ibrox club will be in come Sunday, but they’re already missing key players. They’ve let more key players leave, and although they’ll try to bring in at least one centre-back to strengthen their squad, that centre-back certainly won’t be of high quality—they simply don’t have the money for that. And he’ll be playing alongside total strangers in the white-hot atmosphere of a full and raucous Celtic Park. It’s not the sort of debut anyone would wish for, and that might be something we can take advantage of.

It will probably be Bernardo.

Bernardo has proved himself a capable player in these games. He’s got the right presence of mind, and he keeps calm. This is why Rodgers preferred him in European games over domestic games last season; he’s more of a continental player, one who likes a bit more time on the ball. They’ll get in our faces and try to make life hard for us, but I think this is the kind of atmosphere and game where he’ll have chances to make forward runs and pass the ball into space and he’ll absolutely thrive. He’s got a goal against this lot and his cup final assist was priceless.

Yet still, I wonder—because Brendan is Brendan, and Brendan wants to win. He knows we’re facing an opponent that thinks it has us all figured out, that keeps banging on about how close these games have been. And that’s the best time to sucker someone—when they think they’ve got you sussed, and their tactics are built entirely around what they expect your approach will be, only for you to change it on the day.

Rodgers could gamble in another way. If the new signings are of sufficient quality to genuinely improve the team, he might just throw them in there. I mean, these guys are going to have to play in high-pressure games sooner or later. Maybe he figures this is as good a time as any. But that’s a risk because you’re asking guys who haven’t trained properly, who don’t know their teammates, who aren’t familiar with all the things worked on in training, to step in and, in effect, read people’s minds. All the smart little runs, all the little routines … they’ll know none of that.

But there’s a flip side to that too of course because it would certainly put the cat among the pigeons. It would give Clermont and his coaching staff something to react to.

How do you even prepare for that eventuality? How do you construct your own team when you don’t know what their team is going to be?

If you’re in Clermont’s shoes, do you prepare for the worst? If we sign those two big players for Rodgers’ central midfield, do you prepare for them, or do you prepare for the likely starting eleven he’s been watching videos of and drilled his players against?

Just consider that for a moment.

You know you’re not going to face O’Riley, so that’s one big threat gone and he will anticipate us being weaker. But what if we bring in a guy who plays exactly the same way? What do you do then? What’s your plan worth then? Can you adapt it on the fly if you need to?

Football is a chess match for managers, and this is where you need a grandmaster. It’s no coincidence that we won four out of five last season. It’s not an accident, as they believe across town, chalking it up to nothing but luck and a few breaks of the game. That’s just stupid.

It’s about the tactics and talents of the guy in the dugout, and ours is better than theirs.

As I said in the “Games and Gambles” piece, this is what Rodgers gets the big bucks for.

Even if Rodgers goes into the game needing to “do more with less”, I’d still back him to pull it off. That’s what Rodgers does. That’s why we hired him. It’s one of the few good decisions the board has made in the last two years.

My confidence about this weekend is 100% based on the man in the dugout—Brendan Rodgers, his skill set, his knowledge of this fixture, and his ability to surprise people. That’s what will be critical. The decisions that man is making right now will decide this match.

I remember reading a fantastic article by Jonathan Wilson in The Guardian called “The Devil and Jose Mourinho.” I’d advise anyone who loves football to seek it out and read every word.

In that article, Wilson quoted several people who had worked under Mourinho, revealing how he does things. One particular comment from Vitor Bai, the Porto keeper from when they won the UEFA Cup against us and then went on to win the Champions League the following year, stands out.

He talked about their first game against Benfica, where Mourinho predicted the precise tactical change his opposite number would make if Porto scored, and he drilled them to play with only ten men because he said he knew the ref would red card someone because he couldn’t take the pressure … and when these things happened the players knew exactly how to respond and it turned them into True Believers because they saw then that their manager was an obsessive who prepared meticulously and knew his stuff.

They won that game, went on to win the title, and then wrote history.

This is what Sun Tzu meant when he wrote that every battle is won before it is ever fought. It’s all about preparation—how you marshal your resources and deploy them, and the deception involved to a certain degree. And that’s why I don’t think you can rule out a serious Brendan Rodgers team selection surprise, of one sort of another.

Whatever it is, this game will be won long before it kicks off.