Last weekend offered potentially the most powerful example of the zero sum at work for the two clubs. Not as a result of what played out in Inverness and the east end of Glasgow on the opening matches of the league season – Rangers breezing to victory in the Highlands with Celtic huffing and puffing their way to a home draw the following day – but because of what unfolded in Nyon in Switzerland on the Friday.

The repercussions of the Champions League third round qualifying draw conducted by UEFA general secretary David Taylor could be felt well beyond the current season in the homeland of the former SFA chief executive. In being good for one side and bad for the other, the potential financial implications could produce a double whammy. To reach the group stages, Rangers have been tasked with overcoming an eminently beatable Red Star Belgrade at Ibrox on Tuesday for the first leg of the clubs’ tie. Celtic, meanwhile, are outside bets to oust toughest non-seeds Spartak Moscow, the Russian league leaders they will face on their artificial pitch in the Luzhniki Stadium on Wednesday.

When Celtic qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League last December as Rangers found themselves in complete disarray, certain football analysts projected that, within only a couple of years, the Scottish champions could be out of sight of their ancient adversaries. The little matter of £40m greater earnings over that brief period was cited. The projection was predicated on Celtic qualifying for the £10m-earning Champions League group stages as a downsized Rangers had to make do with UEFA Cup involvement – progress to the quarter-finals of which last season banked them a meagre £350,000 from the European governing body’s coffers.

Now, fate could prove the Ibrox club’s fortune. It could, indeed, prevent them being left behind and re-establish some sort of equilibrium between the two Glasgow clubs. Celtic presently have a sounder financial base than their city neighbours and benefit from higher ticket sales and superior commercial revenue. That allows them to offer more attractive salary packages to players. But, if they fall at the Champions League third qualifying round while Rangers hurdle the obstacle it could bring about a £20m swing.

“These qualifiers have the potential to make a real difference,” said David Glen of Pricewaterhouse Cooper, whose latest annual analysis of the state of Scottish football’s finances will be published this week. “A divide has opened up between Celtic and Rangers and the Champions League offers the only route for closing that.

“Rangers’ figures over the past 12 months are the classic contrast demonstrating the importance of the Champions League to the Old Firm. In 2005-06, they reached the last 16 of the competition and that allowed them to post a turnover of nearly £60m and an operating profit of £4.4m. As a result, they reduced their debt to £6m, though they were helped by the merchandise licensing agreement with JJB Sports.

“Last season, with only UEFA Cup football, they had an operating profit of £5.1m and their debt climbed by £10m. Turnover was down to £40m, though that reduction is exaggerated because they have no turnover from merchandise as JJB now handle all of that.”

Celtic chairman Brian Quinn has talked of how the Old Firm’s figures simply “flip round” if one of them participates in the Champions League group stages and the other does not. His club are expected to announce profits of around £20m on an £80m turnover for the last financial year that will wipe out the remainder of their debt – a record return owed in no small part to the “exceptional”, as Quinn calls it, £7.5m Stilian Pterov saleto Aston Villa .

Again, there is a stark contrast with the previous season’s figures. The calamatious elimination by Artmedia Bratislava in the Champions League second qualifying round resulted in Celtic’s turnover then falling to £56m and them posting £4m losses.

It is a capricious world in which the Old Firm find themselves. They seek to maintain a continental competitiveness that requires transfer spend and wage levels that cannot be justified by their domestic environment. And, indeed, if Celtic had been gearing up to play Red Star Belgrade and Rangers were currently preparing to travel to Moscow, the long-term financial outlook for the Ibrox club would be murky.

“Probably in no other business can the luck of a draw, a factor that cannot be controlled regardless of how sound might be your fiscal strategies, have such a major impact on long-term planning,” said Glen. “Although, with Champions League money so central to the balance sheets of the Old Firm, they cannot really plan more than a year in advance.”

The sums involved are not so much central as fundamental according to Rangers owner David Murray. “If the [Old Firm] clubs are to be financially viable, then they need to be in the group stages ever year,” he said this week. “When we do that, we can make a profit. But when we are in the UEFA Cup, as we were last season, we lose money.

“So you can take a risk and bid to reach another level and it can work. Selling someone like Stilian Petrov has worked for Celtic. That’s just the playing field we have here in Scotland. It is the same in the French league and the Italian league but in England you now don’t need to qualify for Europe to make a profit. All you have to do there is make sure that you don’t drop out of the Premiership.”
Against this backdrop, and in light of the fact Murray is currently looking for a buyer for the Ibrox club, sanctioning a near £8m net spend on players in the summer might be viewed as risky – albeit at a far lower level than the splurge Murray allowed under Dick Advocaat in the late 1990s that zoomed the club’s debts beyond the £80m mark.

With this week’s capture of striker Daniel Cousin for £1.5m from Lens bringing a ninth new face to Ibrox over the summer, manager Walter Smith has gone over the budget set aside for beefing up his previously anaemic squad. He appears to have achieved this objective in decent fashion. But while Celtic could cope with the hit of failing to reach the Champions League promised land over the next fortnight, if Smith’s spend does not help him defeat Red Star, Rangers are looking at new, grimmer losses and debt growth.

“You are always keen to keep within your budget but when you are buying rather than selling other people decide the transfer fees,” Smith said at Murray Park on Friday. “I marked out the players we wanted, and I must say we got the majority of them. Once it started to pan out, it worked out we were not going to get the numbers we were looking for, or go over budget. The chairman’s support is appreciated because the club is not in the best situation.”

Smith rejects the suggestion that it is a jam tomorrow situation he now finds himself in – his outlay approved on the basis that the Champions League will provide a commensurate return. “That would be a dangerous thing,” he said. “It is the obvious thing for everybody from the outside to look at it like that, but I just felt we had to spend to bring a more solid foundation to the club.”

Yet, failure to be hobnobbing with the game’s gliterati in Europe’s most prestigious tournament this season could fracture any foundations. Following his Artmedia angst, Smith’s Old Firm counterpart Gordon Strachan is surely well aware of that. Certainly his board of directors will be – Celtic having made it through the tournament’s qualifying stages only once in four attempts. Strachan believes the need for such ties, to accommodate multiple entrants from the big five leagues, makes the term Champions League a misnomer.

“It isn’t really the Champions League because of the number of times champions don’t win it,” he said. “Let’s not call it that. Let’s call it something else. There are teams in it who finished 20 to 30 points behind their champions. It is not the Champions League now. It’s the great-big-money league; the making-as-much-money-as-you-can league.”

Or, in the case of the Old Firm, the making-the-money-you-can’t-live-without league.

Spartak warn Celtic to expect no imitations in Moscow

Celtic will face an arduous task in the Champions League against a resurgent Spartak Moscow side who currently lead the most competitive Russian Premier League in recent memory.

Once the dominant force of the Russian game, in recent times Spartak have fallen behind city rivals CSKA and Lokomotiv. Seven coaches in four years - including disastrous spells under Nevio Scala and Latvian Alexander Starkovs - did little to foster stability. However, under the latest incumbent, Stanislav Cherchesov, a former Spartak and Russia goalkeeper who was appointed earlier this year, they appear to have rediscovered their rhythm.

Going into their home leg this week, the Russians will have the added advantage of greater match-fitness, as they are already more than half-way through their domestic campaign, and will have played five games following their midseason break. Tipping the balance further in Spartak's favour is the fact the match will be played on an artificial pitch. The gargantuan (though rarely filled) 85,000-capacity Luzhniki Stadium, which was built for the 1980 Olympics, is to have grass laid in time to host the Champions League final next year, but in the meantime UEFA have sanctioned the use of the man-made surface.

In Russia they talk about playing the ‘Spartak way', a reference to the short passing game which they embraced during Soviet times. The current team's style is more pragmatic, and owes much of its success this season to the merits of a well-organised, and stable back four, who provide a very solid protective wall in front of Croatian international keeper Stipe Pletikosa.

However, Spartak go into this game with a minor defensive crisis. Regular starter, Czech international Martin Jiranek, is injured, as is Brazilian fullback Jeder. It means that Jiranek's compatriot, Radoslav Kovác, who normally operates as a holding midfielder, could drop into the back four, and there may be a rare start for Lithuanian defender, Ignas Dedura, who has been out with injury since March last year.

The lynchpin and elder statesman of the Spartak team is their 31-year-old international playmaker, Yegor Titov (pictured left) who has been at the club since the age of seven. Having endured a year-long ban as a result of a failed drugs test several years ago, the midfielder has lost a touch of pace, but none of his ability to influence the course of a game. He also scores plenty of goals, and has eight so far this campaign. Providing added creative spark along side him in the centre will be the wonderfully monikered Junior Santos Batista Mozart. The Brazilian, who flits between periods of underachievement and moments of brilliance, was keen to leave Moscow in the summer, and was touted unsuccessfully around a number of European clubs, including Celtic.

So he may decide to use the Champions League platform to turn on the style, to show his would-be suitors what they missed.

The Russian Premier League is an increasingly popular first stop for talented young Brazilians these days, and Spartak have just splashed an estimated £5 million - seeing off rivals Lokomotiv in a bidding war - on another one, young Goias forward, Welliton, who is unlikely to start against Celtic, but expect to see him used as an impact player in the last half hour, as might Ukrainian international winger, Maxim Kalnichenko, who has pace to burn. Despite the fact that he scored the winner in Spartak's 3-2 league victory over Tom Tomsk last weekend, there is no room on Spartak's 20-strong list of players registered for the competition for the exceptionally gifted forward Quincy. A product of the Ajax Academy the Dutchman was signed 18 months ago from Arsenal, but who has been experiencing a bout of the O'Connors in his attempts to adapt to life in Russia.

Starting up front will be Russian international Roman Pavluchenko, the current top scorer with 10 goals this season, and the focal point of all of their attacks; he is most likely to be partnered by U-21 international, Nikita Bazhenov.

DAN BRENNAN

Stojanovic expects repeat of Ibrox glory with young Stars

STEVAN Stojanovic has hazy memories of Glasgow, and of playing against Rangers when he captained the Red Star Belgrade team that lifted the European Cup in 1991. Stojanovic, now director of football at Red Star, played in the 3-0 win over Rangers in Belgrade, but only lasted 45 minutes of the 1-1 draw at Ibrox.

“Mark Hateley smashed into me and at half-time I felt very ill,” the former goalkeeper remembered this week. “I went to hospital and it turned out that I had brain concussion. That’s not my major memory of Glasgow, but I remember it as a good place because we got through to the next round.”
Stojanovic will see some familiar faces next week: Walter Smith was assistant coach to Graeme Souness back in 1991, while the Rangers scorer was Ally McCoist. “He scored a very good goal and was one of their best players,” said Stojanovic. “But we had Darko Pancev who hit a fantastic goal in Scotland: and we had basically travelled to Glasgow just to keep our advantage, as the win in Belgrade had given us the belief that we were unbeatable at home.”

He is hoping for a similar result next week, but the background to the tie could not be more different: while 17 years ago, Red Star beat Grasshoppers Zurich in the previous round (and Rangers beat Valletta of Malta 10-0), last week Red Star needed away goals to edge past Levadia Tallinn after losing the second leg 2-1 in Estonia.

The result was not enough for Bosko Djurovski to keep his job: the popular coach, who guided Red Star to the League and Cup double last season, was encouraged to resign last Friday and replaced by disciplinarian Milorad Kosanovic. “We came to the conclusion that it’s not acceptable for Red Star to lose against a team that are so far behind us in terms of quality and reputation,” said president Dragan Stojkovic. “We have spent a lot of money on building a team in keeping with the fans’ expectations and have worked hard to keep players here who have won the League and Cup double here the last two years. But we have big ambitions and playing in Europe is among them.”
The new man in charge will be without midfield playmaker Dusan Basta, suspended for the first leg, and will be looking to former Portsmouth winger Ognjen Koroman for some inspiration.

Koroman will be joined by the highly-rated Dejan Milovanovic, whose performances at the Under-21 European Championships this summer helped Serbia reach the final. He scored a long-distance winner against Italy and continued the escape from the shadow of his father Djordje, who also played at Red Star Belgrade. “He has been a great help in my career but he left me alone when he realised I had talent to make it on my own,” said Milovanovic, who has won League and Cup doubles in 2004, 2006 and 2007 in the Serbian capital.

Kosanovic is likely to continue with Djurovski’s preferred 4-3-3 formation, though goals have been a problem, with youth-team graduate Filip Djordjevic seen as too fresh for the first team, and new signing Hernan Barcos still settling in Belgrade and learning the language.

Despite the hectic week he has had, Stojanovic is confident that Red Star will make life difficult for Rangers: “We have a good team here,” he said. “I know that the game in Glasgow will be hard, but I also know that we are better than we showed against Levadia. Red Star cannot play two such bad games in a row, that’s for sure. Our big disadvantage is that we haven’t played in the Champions League for a long time and we all know that. We accept that we played a bad game for once and just get on with things.”

The director wanted to point out that UEFA’s warning to the Red Star fans about racism before the game - following on from chants directed at DaMarcus Beasley and Jean-Claude Darcheville during the FK Zeta match, and Partizan Belgrade’s expulsion from the UEFA Cup after crowd violence in their second qualifying round match - was premature.

“Any suggestion that there is racism at this club or among our fans is ridiculous,” he said. “We have four black players in the team and Ibrahima Gueye (from Senegal) and Segundo Castillo (from Ecuador) are fans’ favourites. All have said they feel great living in Belgrade and have never had any problems.”

Ben Lyttleton