white knuckle ride awaits in round 5 of the champions league

A curtailed month November. First we had an enforced break from league action for the Scotland v Holland Euro 2004 Championship qualifier at Hampden on the weekend of the 15th, quickly followed by a complete break from football the following Wednesday as our national team enjoyed a sightseeing trip to Amsterdam before allowing the Dutch team to warm up for their trip to Portugal by taking part in a light-hearted kickabout in the Arena. From Bravehearts to wet farts all in the space of four days. I swear, Shakespeare couldn't write stuff like this.

Meanwhile, back on the domestic front Celtic's stately progress towards relieving the trophy polisher at the Death Star of their duties next season continued unabated.

Five goal spankings were administered to Kilmarnock and Dunfermline (how sorry we all felt for both of them) which brought the aggregate score since going to the top of the league after the game at Ibrox on October 4th to 20:0 over the course of five league games. If I was a betting man I wouldn't fancy the odds of the league championship being decided on goal difference this season.

The fact is that Celtic are playing like a team who want to win everything going while the King of Kings himself looks as if he wants to bow out by giving us something special to remember. Even by his remarkably high standards he is consistently turning in European class performances on a weekly basis. Mind you, the supporting cast have been doing not too bad as well, especially Chris Sutton, while Liam Miller seems to have somewhat abated the clamour from sections of the stands for the board to spend some money, for which Brian Quinn will doubtless be truly thankful.

Sandwiched in between those SPL ritual slaughters, the Belgian champions came calling on Champions League business. It was billed as a must win game for Celtic, and in truth our chances of progressing beyond the first group stage would have been looking as good as Michael Jackson's of convincing a psychiatrist that he's just as normal as the next guy had we not picked up all three points, but in the first 30 minutes you would have sworn it was Aberdeen and not Anderlecht who were out there such was Celtic's complete mastery of the situation.

This Jekyll and Hyde form in the premier European competition is completely mystifying and can surely only be attributed to Johnny Foreigner poisoning the water supply in the team hotel during away trips.

Regardless, we are in a position which most of us would have been happy with before it all started: three points required to qualify with one home game and one away game left to play. All we have to do is beat Bayern Munich and we've hit a home run. Nothing to it, after all the German meisters have only got 18 current international players in the squad and their recent form of being semi-finalists, runners-up or winners in three of the last five years is nothing to be scared of... er, depending on how much you've had to drink.

It's naturally difficult not to be infused with optimism given a 63 game unbeaten record at CP, but this is arguably a tougher nut to crack than either Lyon or Anderlecht. The permutations surrounding all the possible outcomes of Group A are too brain-scrambling to contemplate for longer than three nano seconds.

Suffice to say that as we go to print we could end up in any of the four places in the group. Which is more than can be said for our city rivals, whose challenge collapsed round their ears during the course of two games against Manchester United and, needing a win against VfB Stuttgart in Germany, leaves them clutching at the possibility of being entered for the Golden Rose of Montreaux for the best European comedy performance of the year - and even that looks likely to be snatched away by Berti Vogts' men following that slapstick show in Amsterdam.

Round 5 coming up then. Hold on to your tammy, it could be a white knuckle ride!

JB BANAL