Celtic must not view the lack of a challenge from Ibrox as a problem. It is an opportunity.

The other day, Celtic released the price for the ticket package for the upcoming Champions League campaign, and it was better than some of us expected.

It wasn’t better by any large margin, but it was an improvement on the £200 price tag that many were anticipating. The importance of full houses at those games cannot be underestimated. The need for us to perform well in this competition cannot be overstated.

Whatever we may think about how the transfer window went, one way or another, some progress has been made, and now we need to take the next step forward.

This is more critical to us than ever before.

One common thread that runs through any discussion of Scottish football at the moment revolves around whether or not Celtic’s complete dominance is strictly healthy for the game.

This is an absurd question because it would never be asked if the Ibrox club was on top. It was never asked before, but I understand why the question arises now. For some, it is a legitimate concern, and I have my own feelings on it, which is why I have been banging the drum for years for Aberdeen, Hibs, and Hearts to be better — but all in vain.

It has become blindingly obvious that, for Celtic to improve, we need to set our sights much higher than the Scottish Premier League and look beyond what is happening on our own doorstep. Celtic’s future is where it has always been, and the evidence for this continues to accumulate like snowdrifts in a heavy storm.

That future lies in some form of European Super League — one that will be sanctioned by UEFA, I have no doubt. But whatever it is called, a Super League is exactly what it will be.

This current iteration of the Champions League has clearly been designed with this concept in mind. Although I think we are in somewhat preposterous territory with the number of games teams are now being asked to play, it is clear to everyone that this is the direction of travel.

Once clubs have been established as playing eight games, it won’t be long before they are playing 10, then 12 or more. The teams which can expect to progress well will play more than that anyway.

Celtic face a minimum of eight games in this year’s competition. Due to the favourable draw, we will probably find ourselves playing 10, and that’s assuming we go out at that stage, which we obviously don’t want. Ideally, we would be in the round of 16, but that’s another two games, and suddenly a European campaign starts to look a lot like half a domestic league season.

It won’t be long until national leagues have to decide whether they can sustain one cup competition, never mind two, when their biggest clubs are competing to this extent in a much larger tournament. Top-level teams already play far too many matches, and if a European League comes into vogue, the priorities will have to shift across the game.

For a club like Celtic, there will be more money available than ever before, but unless we see dramatic changes in how the league is set up, that money will have to be spent on larger squad sizes and stronger teams. This is the only way any club will cope with a long domestic campaign and a long European campaign in the same timeframe.

If you think it’s bad now, playing three matches a week, imagine four matches a week and needing two different squads to cope with the schedule. That’s what the future might hold. The only way that doesn’t happen is if UEFA scales back its plans — which it won’t — or if domestic leagues change radically, reducing the number of games, and that is unlikely to happen either.

It has always been a blind spot in European Super League planning that you would never be able to fit in so many fixtures alongside a full domestic campaign and with international demands higher than ever.

I completely welcome the expansion of European football because we are not going to get a realistic challenge from Ibrox or anywhere else anytime soon.

The best tests our players will get, and the reason players will want to come here in the future, is that we’ll be playing regularly, hopefully, at the top table and against top teams. That’s an attractive prospect for players, and the better we do in those competitions, the closer we get to being credible. The more money we make and the higher the salaries we can pay, the better the quality of players we can attract.

And the more irrelevant the domestic competition becomes. In short, the more irrelevant the club across the city becomes with the more European football becomes not just a sideshow, but the main event for a club like ours.

That means we have to start treating it as seriously as we treat the domestic game. We have to aim higher and do a lot more than we have done in recent years.

The positive thing is that Rodgers seems to understand this, and the quality of the signings in the summer window — although there weren’t enough of them — suggests that the battle is a fairer fight than it was before.

It is obvious that this is what Rodgers sees coming, and where he believes we should be. He’s not asking for a higher calibre of player to continue dominating in Scotland. He wants to make his mark in Europe. He wants this club to be able to compete at that level.

From an Ibrox point of view, that is even worse.

As we’ve pointed out repeatedly, if we prepare for Europe and aim for success there, domestic football takes care of itself. If we build a team for that level, we’ll be even further ahead of everyone else in Scotland.

That’s how we have to start thinking. I know there are people, including some at Celtic Park, who believe that our betterment depends to some extent on the team across the city being competitive or strong, but at some point, we have to see this as an opportunity, not a danger, and cut the cord completely.

The gap has never been bigger.

Are we supposed to hold ourselves back just so they can keep up? No. The only answer is to move forward, to move towards that broader horizon, and to embrace the future, because European football is the future. If we want to be a credible player in that project, then we have to step up our game and prove that we belong.

What other choice do we have? It’s either moving in that direction or moving backwards, chained to the Ibrox nightmare and all that goes with it. I know what every Celtic fan would prefer, I know what the Celtic manager wants, and I know there must be people on our board of directors who see this choice clearly and are willing to make the right one.