THESE are stirring times to be a Celtic player. Next week, Arsenal will arrive in Glasgow for a Champions League play-off earned with one of the club's finest away wins in Europe.
At the end of this week, a trip to Aberdeen will kick-start a Scottish Premier League campaign for which the club have been installed as favourites to win. And in the coming weeks, there is much anticipation about the football that might be fashioned
under the guidance of new manager Tony Mowbray.
But these are only stirring times to be a certain grade of Celtic player. As with the tests against English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur and Sunderland in the previous two weekends, most of those who performed acceptably for Mowbray against Manchester City on Saturday will have few opportunities to do so again in the coming months.
And they know it. After a battling 2-1 defeat against opponents who gave run-outs to almost £100million worth of summer signings, the subterranean corridors leading to the press lounge at the City of Manchester Stadium felt a fitting place to engage a glum Willo Flood on his season's prospects. For the Irishman knows he is going underground in senior squad terms under Mowbray. He has been little else since Celtic paid £50,000 to Cardiff in January to bring an end to a successful loan spell with Dundee United.
Indeed, in featuring from the first whistle of first-team occasions in pre-season, Flood has sampled more senior starts, of sorts, with Mowbray than he did under Gordon Strachan. Such involvement is hardly going to sustain him, and he doesn't pretend otherwise.
"It has been up and down a bit," he said of his six months at the club. "When you go from playing week in and week out and really enjoying your football to a bit-part player, you become frustrated with yourself and frustrated with the things around me. I just need to keep my head and wait and see what happens over the next couple of weeks."
Asked to clarify if the next couple of weeks" meant he could be seeking regular first-team football outside of Celtic Park – whether on loan or otherwise – as early as the end of the transfer window, he was quick to redefine the timescale for such action.
"That's too soon, maybe," he admitted. "I have to keep the head, hope to catch the manager's eye in training and, if I'm not involved come January then I'll have to go and speak to him and see where he sees me in his plans."
Frankly, that is how the situation will surely pan out. It is impossible not to feel sorry for Flood. "(The Celtic move] was the chance for me to play for my boyhood team. I wasn't going to turn that down and I'll never have any regrets," he said.
But it is equally impossible to see a role at the club for the chimney-sweep-like 24-year-old, who really does appear like a little boy lost. There was a spark to the play of former City forward Georgios Samaras – booed by the home fans while Flood, a former youth product at the club, was cheered – and such as Chris Killen. The Greek produced a defence-shredding diagonal pass that allowed the New Zealander to equalise a crisp finish from City's new midfield arrival Gareth Barry.
And even when the encounter became the Carlos Tevez and Emmanuel Adebayor show after a stonking 50th-minute strike from Craig Bellamy that proved decisive, such as the clearly-gifted Paddy McCourt, Paul Caddis, Darren O'Dea and stand-in centre-back Massimo Donati stood up pretty well. But Flood never really enhanced his chances of stepping up to the first team, despite being one of the few given the full 90 minutes.
He would rather play somewhere on loan than sit on the bench at Celtic. But the latter will be his fate when Arsène Wenger brings his flamboyant side north for the first leg of their Champions League tie on 18 August. It is a head-to-head that should prove beyond Mowbray's men but at least they will not be facing the Arsenal that Flood did in his City days.
"I played against them twice and they were The Invincibles and all that back then," he said. "It is going to be a big test for us. But I think we've shown over in Moscow that there is a team there that can go and get results nowadays."
Sadly for Flood, he is not part of that. The team that Mowbray selects for those "exciting" games will, the manager is convinced, give the Londoners hairy moments. According to Mowbray, his team will stand or fall against a team that regularly feature in the latter stages of the Champions League, by whether they can restrict their concerted attacks to mere close shaves.
"I said after the Rangers performance (a 3-0 defeat by Arsenal in a friendly last weekend] the top four (in England] are on a different level to rest of the Premier League, having experienced that with West Brom last year. Arsenal fit into that so it is a big, big ask for us," he said.
"But over the two games I know we have players who can cause them problems. Again it will come down to whether we can have good enough concentration out of possession and will we take the chances when they come along. Because, undoubtedly with this team we have they will come along against Arsenal."
More pressing for Mowbray at the minute is who forms his backline for the trip to Pittodrie on Saturday. An appeal over the one-game ban handed to Glen Loovens for a kick at Maurice Edu in the last Old Firm game of last season should free the Dutchman to play. Mowbray said the appeal had nothing to do with him and that he hadn't even watched the incident. But with Gary Caldwell suspended for Saturday and Stephen McManus still recovering from a summer operation, he may be grateful his club's powerbrokers are well versed in SFA disciplinary procedure.
Manchester City: Given; Zabaleta, Toure (Ben Haim 46), Dunne, Bridge; de Jong (Adebayor 46), Ireland, Barry; Wright-Philips (Weiss 73), Bellamy (Tevez 66), Robinho.
Celtic: Zaluska; Caddis (Hinkel 67), Donati, O'Dea, Naylor (Fox 77); Flood (McGinn 77), Crosas (McGeady 67), McCourt (Ferry 77), Mizuno (Fortune 61); Killen (McDonald 61), Samaras (Conroy 77).