Martin O'Neill went public about having to beat 3 Rangers teams now it's Celtic who deal in multiples

Martin O’Neill has never been short of one-liners over the years and there’s one he’s often used when it comes to describing the scale of the task he faced when he arrived at Celtic in the summer of 2000.

The Northern Irishman says he didn’t have to just beat one Rangers team – he had to overcome three of them. Back then it didn’t go unnoticed by O’Neill that the talk when he took charge was then Gers boss Dick Advocaat having so much talent at his disposal he had one side for Europe, another for the domestic league and a third one for the cups.

It didn’t quite work out that way as his Celtic outfit came out on top regardless of who Rangers put out that season – and it’s a line that ended up in the same drawer as Sir David Murray’s ‘for every fiver’ nugget. And yet, it’s one of those soundbites that come to mind right now... but this time regarding Celtic.

Brendan Rodgers’ team are flying right now. They’ve been slick all season but in the last week they seem to have gone up another gear with Aberdeen getting slapped around Hampden last Saturday and then RB Leipzig given a Champions League chasing.

But they are about to head into a period that will really show just how good this Celtic squad – and we mean squad – really are. Winter is coming and it’s roll the sleeves up time as the workload is about to get extremely tough.

Once Sunday's clash at Kilmarnock and the latest international break is out of the way, the Hoops are going to face 10 games in just 36 days before the Old Firm clash at Ibrox on January 2. Go right through until the start of February and it’s 20 matches in 88 days, so it will still be a game every four-and-a-bit days for three months.

That’s enough to put strain on any squad and there’s every