Celtic will be seeded in all three qualifying rounds for next season’s Champions League qualifiers.
In two months time Ronny Deila’s replacement will kick off the new season looking to guide the hoops through the Champions path into the money spinning group stages.
With the seeding system based on performances over the last five seasons Celtic are still using the points picked up during the 2012/13 season when Neil Lennon’s side reached the last 16 after emerging from their group with 10 points.
In the unlikely event that the qualifiers run to form Celtic will face Bate Borisov (Belarus), Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia) or Ludogorets (Bulgaria) or two other similarly rated teams for a group stage place.
The other top seeded sides in the Champions path are Olympiakos (Greece), Viktoria Plzen (Czech Rep), FC Salzurg (Austria) or Apoel Nicosia (Cyprus).
Celtic will go into the second round draw on June 20 for matches to be played on July 12/13 and 19/20. In recent seasons this stage has been split geographically with Celtic visiting Ireland and Iceland twice under Deila and Neil Lennon.
Progress at that stage will lead into the third qualifying round on July 26/27 and August 2/3 with the winners going through to the Champions League play off while the losers drop into the Europa League play-off.
According to the brilliantly researched Bert Kassie website the new Celtic manager can look forward to playing teams such as FK Astrana (Kazakhstan), Red Star Belgrade (Serbia) or Dinamo Tbilisi (Georgia).
With upsets expected at every stage Celtic could face lesser rated teams to progress but after the exits to Maribor and Malmo the new Celtic boss can make a quick impact if he can steer his side through qualifiers against the champions of countries such as Bulgaria, Belarus and Croatia.