NOBODY at Celtic, least of all their manager Brendan Rodgers, needs to be reminded just how perilous the opening Champions League qualifying round can be. And as if to underline the point, the woes of city rivals Rangers during the week served a timely reminder that nothing in football can be taken for granted.

But a year on from one of the most humiliating results in Celtic’s long and proud history, when the part-timers of Lincoln Red Imps humbled their mighty visitors in the shadow of the Rock of Gibraltar, the difference in the Celtic manager’s levels of belief and confidence in his squad could hardly be starker.

Rodgers is a class act, so he would never deride a professional who worked under him at Celtic at that time. But it is clear that in his mind, there were players at Celtic at that time who had no future at the club, who he had to cobble together into some sort of cohesive unit to rescue the situation and somehow stumble their way through.

They managed to do just that, and more, as they eventually fought their way through to the promised land of the Champions League group stages, but there is no question that Rodgers has a great deal more confidence in the men under his charge at this point than he did 12 months ago.

Some players have left, some have come in, and some have fought to turn their Celtic careers around through application and buying into their manager’s methods. And as Rodgers himself concedes, there is one massive difference between the Celtic team of the present, and the one he inherited; “I enjoy watching the team now!” he said. “They were good guys last year, good boys, but we were a long way from where I would consider them be a team.

“Now, firstly, fundamentally they can defend, and they want to defend. They defend forwards, and they are aggressive. They no longer defend with their eyes, they defend with physicality.

“They press, they get up to people, and then they play football, and they are good to watch and the numbers prove that. They win games.

“It’s still very early on in the season, they are still getting fitter and stronger, but yeah, there’s a day and night difference and we’re in a good place.”

Rodgers’ faith in his men is such that he is in two minds over whether or not to add another defender to his squad, even with the news that Dedryck Boyata could be missing for up to three months with a medial ligament injury.

He may well decide to do so, but he isn’t fazed by the thought of going through these crucial qualifiers with only the men who served him so well last season.

“I think it was always going to be the way that I was confident that if we didn’t make a signing, that we could get through with the players that we have all being fit and well,” he said. “They now have rhythm, they now know how we work, there’s a stability and a confidence in how they play and I’ve seen it already this year in pre-season.

“There’s a development in one or two just by confidence in the way they perform. That will still have been the core of the team that is going to get us through. If you bring new guys in then it’s going to take a bit of time to adapt and adjust.

“And we will probably bring quality in at some point, but yeah, the guys have shown us over the course of the season that if we have to go in with what we have, we’re in a good condition to do that.”

The physical difference in Celtic’s players from this time last year is obvious to the eye, but Rodgers believes the development of their mental resilience has been just as marked, and no less important.

That’s why he is more than confident that the men who take to Windsor Park in green and white on Friday will not only show their opponent the respect they are due, but will stay composed amid the frenzied atmosphere that is sure to face them.

“I've watched three of Linfield's games and we won't take them lightly,” he said. “We respect them because they won three trophies as well last season.

“David [Healy] has had a great impact. I watched both legs of their last tie and Northern Irish teams will always be tough. They'll fight, they'll run and they'll work.

“A big part of my job last year was to go and prepare the team mentally for how to deal with big occasions and big games, and how to keep that calmness and that focus.

“You want to go and play in a passionate stadium, and it gives you the chance as a team and as a group to bond even tighter together, and have that oneness that you need.

“Then when a question is put to you in the game, which there usually is, it’s not about how each individual plays, it’s about how the team play.

“Do they have that resilience and that mentality? That’s something that we’ve built over the last period of time.

“For us, the aim of the Linfield game home and away is to get through. We won’t be perfect, but we go to fight to get into the next round.”