Former Celtic captain Paul Lambert has revealed that stopping Rangers from winning ten-in-a-row in 1998 was the most pressure – and ultimately the most satisfaction – he ever felt as a player.

Lambert was part of Wim Jansen’s side who stopped the Ibrox side winning an unprecedented ten titles in succession exactly 20 years ago today with the 2-1 win over St Johnstone, an afternoon that for Lambert was about protecting the legacy and history of Celtic.

“For me, we were out there every week trying to protect the legacy of guys like Billy McNeill and John Clark. Guys like Bertie Auld and Danny McGrain, guys that were still visible around the club and whose contribution we all knew about without them ever having to shout about it.”

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As Lambert eased through his playing career, there was a point when the trophy cabinet would have needed an extension.

Lambert won the biggest and most elite competition of all during his time with Borussia Dortmund when he nullified Zinedine Zidane in a Champions League final, but throughout his time in Glasgow there were no domestic honours he did not claim.

Part of the Treble winning side under Martin O’Neill, the first Celtic side to perform a clean sweep since Jock Stein’s era, Lambert finished off his time in the Hoops with four Championship medals, three Scottish Cup medals and three League Cup medals.

And yet it is the 1998 title medal that always comes to mind as the most notable of all the trinkets and gongs he collected through a celebrated playing career.

“The pressure we experienced that season was unlike anything else in my career,” recalled Lambert. “Nothing else came close. There was an intensity to that entire campaign that is difficult to explain.

“If you lived through the build-up to Rangers winning the 9 then you’ll have an inkling of it but as a player, a Celtic player, it was just immense. Everywhere you went – the shops, to put petrol in your car, drop the kids off – someone was telling you that you needed to stop the ten. It started before a ball had even been kicked that season.

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“And then of course we got off to a terrible start. When we finally did it, it was about relief more than anything. There was joy and there was so much to celebrate but my God, there was relief too.

“Put it this way if they had won it that season they would still have been bringing DVDs out to this day!

“There is no doubt in my mind that of everything I won in football, that medal and that title would be the one I’d regard as the most important, certainly domestically. Winning the Champions League changed my life and changed the way my career went but winning the league in 1998 was something that had been waking in a cold sweat at night.

“We had to do it. There were no two ways about it. It was win at all costs and the sheer elation when we done it is hard to explain.”

The turning point that season came in the New Year derby when Celtic hosted Rangers. The Ibrox side were four points to that good by that stage and anything other than a Parkhead victory effectively would have set the seal on Rangers claiming an historic tenth title.

That game provided an infamous Gazza moment when the then Rangers midfielder played an imaginary flute as he warmed up but it was Celtic who hit the right notes.

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Craig Burley netted before Lambert secured the points with his first goal for the club, a rasping long range effort that he celebrated with some gusto.

“We knew how important not just the win was but the performance,” said Lambert. “Psychologically it was impossible to underplay the significance of it. We played really well against a Rangers side that was still full of quality players and we need the win.

“It gave us the belief that we could go on and beat them not just over the piece of 90 minutes but over a long league season. It brought the gap to a point but for me I just believed from them on in.

“That was game that won it for us. Not formally, of course, because there was still so much football to play but that was the game where afterwards you could sense the shift in attitude within the dressing room.

“We knew then we had in us. It wasn’t plain sailing to get there. The mental pressure was still there and, honestly, there was nothing subsequently in my career that every came close to matching that season.

“Just knowing we had done it and how much it meant to everyone associated with the club was an amazing feeling. I don’t know that we would have recovered if we hadn’t stopped it. It was easily the most memorable and anxious season of my professional career. I still thank my lucky stars that we done it!"