CELTIC’S European opponents Rosenborg sacked their popular manager Kare Ingebrigsten and asked Rini Coolen to step in before last Wednesday's Champions League qualifier against Icelandic side Valur.

It emerged last night that a club board meeting, which finished just before the match in Trondheim began, decided there was to be a change of head coach, something which disgusted the players.

And Coolen was asked to step-up from his role as an academy coach before Ingebrigsten knew he had lost his job.

Read more: Was Rosenborg coach Rino Coolen having us on or does he really not know anything about Celtic?​

The Norwegian champions claim there is unity ahead of tonight’s tie in Glasgow and that the past strange past seven days will have no affect on the game but few in Norway believe this to be true with most pundits utterly writing off the chances of Rosenborg beating Celtic.

And Coolen, who speaks excellent English, managed to add to the bizarreness of the situation when he said the job was offered to him two days before that game against Valur.

He said: “It was last Monday the decision was made to change coach. Before the (Valur) game. I was asked to step in and help the club.”

But then later in his press conference, Coolen backtracked and said: “‘It was the day after the coach left. Thursday? Yes.”

Read more: Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers insists Dedryck Boyata won't leave before Champions League qualifiers​

Rosenborg captain Mike Jensen refused to speak about the goings-on but made it clear that he felt his side were now huge under-dogs.

He said: “Are Celtic favourites? I would say that, yes. We played Europa League and they played Champions League - and they beat us.

“Celtic is a bigger club and it’s an advantage to them that the first game is here. But we are really looking forward to the game.

“Last year we should have scored a goal. We were happy in how we played but in football we needed a little bit more quality and luck and maybe we could have won the first leg. You have to work hard for those small margins and we will do that on Wednesday night.”