Paul Lambert declares Celtic Lisbon Lions will never be eclipsed as he bristles at Kevin Thomson's Rangers claim

On a pedestal, never to be knocked off.

Don't ever suggest to Paul Lambert that a Scottish side will top the success of the Lisbon Lions.

Not unless one can miraculously upset the odds - not to mention the Euro elite gazillions - to somehow win the Champions League any time soon.

Even then the former Celtic midfielder might not be convinced.

Lambert was taken aback by Kevin Thomson ’s claim that the current Rangers team would go down as the best ever to come from our shores if they win the Europa League this evening - better even than Jock Stein’s European Cup trailblazers of 1967.

The former Hoops’ star is well qualified to argue against Thomson’s opinion, to be fair.

This is a footballer who arrived at Parkhead just months after lifting the big one - the European Cup - himself with Borussia Dortmund and going on to captain Celtic in the UEFA Cup Final defeat to Porto in Seville in 2003.

Not that anyone in Martin O’Neill’s side that year ever thought they were on the verge of matching the club’s greatest achievement.

Lambert admits he felt the weight of history and the standards set by the Lions every single day during his eight years in the east end of Glasgow.

Their success in becoming the first British side to win the European Cup was made all the greater by the fact every member of Stein’s side came from within a 30-mile radius of Celtic Park.

It also came just a year after the Hoops had ended a 12-year title drought.

So Thomson’s respectful words in yesterday’s Record that a Rangers win in Seville “would be the best achievement ever by any Scottish club” due to their own journey back from the doldrums doesn’t wash with Lambert.

It hardly even touches the surface.

He told “Rangers have done well to get to