Celtic’s Champions League fate is straightforward. At Ibrox the situation is perilous.

So just the other night, our Champions League fate was sealed in Croatia. It was decided as Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split finished second and third, with Rijeka taking the top spot. That confirms for us the advantage of being seeded in the group stage draw.

There’s no guarantee we’re going to go through. In fact, the slightly more “favourable” nature of the route might give more of us sleepless nights than comfort, because the general consensus was that the cup final was going to be straightforward—and it very much wasn’t. That worry lingers, and it’s going to linger for a while.

The stakes are enormous. Success means hitting the jackpot of all jackpots. But failure? Failure is on a whole other level. This board of directors of ours, which prides itself on being risk-averse, has to understand—has to—that failing to prepare here would be the riskiest strategy they’ve undertaken in a long, long time.

The oft-repeated line is that our club only plans for Europa League group stage football, that we don’t overly rely on that Champions League pot of gold. And indeed, the profits over the last couple of years suggest that we might be perfectly fine even without it. But let’s not kid ourselves—nobody would be happy with that scenario.

It’s not just that we want to be in the top competition; it’s that we pretty much need to be if we’re going to maintain our European cachet. The gulf in funding between the Europa League and the Champions League is vast, and if we’re not in the latter, it’s a serious financial hit.

For the most part, we’re in a decent position. We know what’s ahead of us, and we know the teams that might stand in our way. There’s some debate about who we can realistically expect to face, but no one thinks the quality is beyond us. Every potential opponent is imminently beatable—and if we somehow don’t do the job, then we really only have ourselves to blame.

That cannot be said for the club across the city, whose financial position is both more precarious and far less likely to survive a major European setback. There’s been a lot of chatter in the media today—erroneous chatter, I have to say—suggesting that their situation might be more robust than many assume. But they’re wrong.

Because let me tell you this: if they go out in the second-round qualifier and then fail in the Europa League playoffs and lose there, they can still count on a parachute to the third competition. But the Conference League is a disaster for them, and there is an outside chance that they might lose that too as group stage football is not guaranteed now. If they go out of the Champions League and then crash out of the Europa League in quick succession, European football irself could be going bye-bye for the rest of the campaign.

It would take something truly disastrous for that to happen—but it is not impossible. The media is largely oblivious to this—or, at the very least, doesn’t want to look at it. The Ibrox fans haven’t even begun to consider this scenario in their worst nightmares. But if you’re a potential new owner, the idea that there may be no European group stage football has to be right at the top of your concerns. It should sound a warning bell loud and clear.

It’s been a long time since a Scottish club our size went out of Europe altogether.

The last time it happened?

It was at Ibrox and it triggered the momentum that brought them down completely. The downfall of Rangers wasn’t sealed by their twin European exits under Ally McCoist in the 2012 campaign, but those exits stripped them of any remaining wiggle room and breathing space.

This wouldn’t be quite so existential, but it would necessitate some of the hardest and most brutal cuts to the playing squad they’ve had to endure in a long time. Because you’re not just talking about the financial impact of one season, or how the board covers those debts. You’re talking about Financial Sustainability Regulations—and those can be devastating. The cuts would have to be immediate, and they’d have to be deep.

Worse still, the effects wouldn’t be confined to one season. If that financial sustainability bubble bursts, they’re looking at cuts the following year just to drag things back under some kind of control. It’s a three-year rolling average we’re talking about here—this is the kind of disaster that bleeds from one campaign into the next.

Now, they say it would take a calamity.

But the chances of them drawing Panathinaikos in the next round are around 3/1—and if they do get the Greek side and they do lose, they’ll be facing two Europa League qualifiers just to get to a group stage. No room for error. One bad night, and it’s not just a competition they’re crashing out of. The financial damage would be catastrophic.

So keep your eyes peeled, folks.

That second-round Champions League qualifier is the one to watch. If they go into that game at the end of July—when we’re still in pre-season mode—and they lose at that point, then they’re dicing with disaster. Perhaps even in the literal sense.

For them, those qualifiers at that particular time are a nightmare. Seeded or not, there’s a very real chance they end up in the kind of trouble they can’t dig their way out of. It’s their very own version of “winner takes all.” If they get through the second round, they’re guaranteed Europa League group stage football. If they fail, they might not be in Europe past the end of August.

And the consequences of that won’t stop or start with one season. It would be the start of a long and painful unravelling.