Ryan Christie is hoping that he’ll be dining out on Monday night – and in more ways than one.

The former Inverness Caledonian player has a wager with flat-mate Callum Ferguson, who plays up from for Albion Rovers; whoever scores owes the other a three-course slap-up dinner.

It is incentive enough for Christie who is determined that he will be the one sitting down to a feast.

“It will be very strange,” said Christie. “I don’t really know how it will feel. Obviously he wants to win and I want to win. We are both very competitive people; if one of us scores it’s a three course meal for the other one, that’s the bet.

“I’ve barely seen him actually because I’ve been away in Dubai. He’s been winding me up that I was away in the sun and he was playing in a mudbath at the weekend!

“We’ve spoken a bit about the game, but we’re keeping our cards close to our chest as of now.

“We play FIFA all the time but even little things around the flat it is about trying to get the better of the other one. I am not a bad cook but he is terrible. If I score, it might be a trip out to a restaurant.”

It is not all that Christie hopes he will be biting into this season.

With a League Cup already in the bag and a 19-point lead in the league table, Sunday afternoon’s game against Albion Rovers is the first step on a journey that could deliver Celtic’s first Treble for 17 years.

Only three Celtic teams have achieved such a feat and Christie is well aware of what is at stake.

The 21-year-old was part of the Inverness side who beat Celtic 3-2 after extra-time in the Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden just under two years ago when the Highlanders denied Ronny Deila’s side a potential clean sweep.

Christie’s father, Charlie, was also part of the Inverness side who humbled John Barnes’ Celtic side away back in 2000 to put the former English internationalist out of a job in Glasgow.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Christie thinks he has something of a debt to pay his current club.“Maybe it’s time to repay the favour for Celtic,” he smiled.

While Moussa Dembele and Leigh Griffiths are likely to hang onto the starting jerseys when it comes to league duty, Sunday’s game could be a chance for Christie to get some game time under his belt.

The forward already has a Scottish Cup medal from the season he won it with Inverness, an experience that is so far the highlight of his career.

“Now looking back is when you really realise what kind of achievement it was,” he said. “At the time, we’d had such a good season that it just seemed to fit in with everything but looking back now, for the way it lifted the club and for such a young club like Inverness to bring the Scottish Cup back put the Highlands on the map in terms of Scottish football, which is brilliant.

“Experience wise I was quite fortunate at a young age to start in a Scottish Cup Final. It gave me good experience going on from that to be able to deal with pressure of big games.”

Deila’s side were arguably denied a Treble by that contentious semi-final game – Craig Gordon was sent off and Josh Meekings was lucky to escape a red-card with Celtic leading 1-0 – but there was a sense of unease about that particular Hoops side.

Although they won the title with relative ease, there wasn’t the same fluency and ruthlessness that Brendan Rodgers has brought to the current team and Christie himself believes that Celtic’s fear factor has alerted other teams to just what they are capable of now.

“It’s a credit to us and a credit to all the boys as I would say the dynamic has changed, in terms of the attitude of other clubs,” said Christie.

“Throughout the season in the league their idea would be to come to Celtic Park and frustrate, whereas there has been times in the past when teams would have fancied their chances at Celtic Park but that’s clearly out the window this season.

“But it’s the cup and, including this weekend, every team in the cup will fancy their chances of knocking us out as you never know what could happen.

“So that turns it on us and because we’re seen as one of the bigger teams in the cup and there’s that added pressure that maybe we should be winning it, so we have to make sure we rise to that.”

The talk of winning a Treble now will intensify as its possibility comes into sharp focus but for Christie, the manager’s mantra of never getting too far ahead remains at the forefront of his thinking.

“Our whole mindset from the start, and I know it is very clichés, has been about taking it just one or two games at a time and seeing where that gets us,” he said. “So far it has been good but if we want it to be a really successful season then we have to keep that mindset. We can’t look too far ahead and that starts with the game on Sunday.

“Whatever competition we are in, we want to win and we wouldn’t be happy with anything else. There is no added want to win, it is just normal.”