We’ll know who Celtic’s Flag Day opponents are on Friday

On Friday, 20 June, at 9am, the SPFL will release the complete fixture list for the Premiership, Championship, League One, and League Two for the upcoming campaign.

For the top-flight which now has two newly promoted sides in Falkirk and Livingston, only the initial 33 rounds out of 38 will be announced, as the league splits into a top six and bottom six during the closing stages of the season. The opening fixtures for all four Scottish top leagues are scheduled for the weekend beginning Saturday, 2 August.

Following their confirmation as champions for the fourth straight year in May, Celtic will raise the Premiership flag once again during their opening home league game of the new season. That’s 13 flag days at Celtic Park in 14 years and that’s not too bad a record is it?

Meanwhile, Celtic face an extensive pre-season schedule both at home and abroad before the return of domestic competition. Celtic’s pre-season begins with a visit to Cork, followed by stops in Lisbon and Faro, where they will hold an eight-day warm-weather training camp in Portugal.

The Scottish champions are set to take on Sporting CP in the Algarve, then head back to Glasgow to welcome Newcastle United to Celtic Park. After that, the Double-winners will travel to Lake Como to compete in a summer tournament in Italy, running from 23 to 27 July;

The Hoops are expected to face Ajax and possibly Como in their last pre-season matches before raising the league flag a week later.

Celtic will need to navigate a Champions League play-off in late August, while their Glasgow rivals face three qualifying rounds in a bid to reach Europe’s elite club competition for the first time in three seasons, in a campaign where they ended up with the worst ever record in the old format group stages of the Champions League.

Remember too that they brought out a souvenir framed photo of their game against Liverpool at Ibrox, which they lost 7-1. Levels and all that and theirs is clearly at Europa League level where they do a decent job gathering co-efficient points for Scotland.

Conor Spence