ON THE SPOT: Michael Grant

HERE'S a thought to either inspire or unnerve Tony Mowbray as he goes into his first competitive game against Dynamo Moscow on Wednesday: it is six years since Celtic started a European campaign with a victory.

That's a sequence of five winless openers since Kaunas were brushed aside in a Champions League qualifier in 2003. The defeats and draws have been tolerable in some cases, terrible in others. There was no shame in Celtic losing their first European ties against Manchester United at Old Trafford in 2006 or Barcelona at Parkhead in 2004.

Beginning with a draw away to Spartak Moscow two seasons ago was highly creditable. On the other hand, Gordon Strachan's first and last European campaigns began with that 5-0 defeat against Artmedia Bratislava in 2005 and a goalless home draw against Aalborg last season which torpedoed the prospect of reaching the last 16 of the Champions League.

The Artmedia result is of greatest relevance to Mowbray. It was Strachan's first competitive match in charge and their very first of the 2005-06 season. Dynamo Moscow are the opposition for Mowbray's first competitive match and Celtic's first of 2009-10. Given that it is in Glasgow, and a meaningful advantage really has to be taken to Moscow for what could be a fraught second leg, Celtic are arguably under more pressure to win their opener than at any time since 2003. At least they were already in the lucrative group stage when they stumbled against Aalborg last season. If they fail to overcome Dynamo they will drop out of the Champions League before it has properly begun and enter the Europa League instead, and the entire perception of Mowbray's first season will be damaged from the start.

Wednesday is a step into the unknown. So far the signs have been encouraging under Mowbray. Celtic have yet to concede in three pre-season friendlies and 3-0 against Brisbane Roar and 5-0 against Al-Ahly, either side of a goalless draw at Cardiff City, have been decent preparatory fixtures. The final warm-up will come against Spurs today.

And yet the evidence amassed from any sequence of friendlies is notoriously unreliable. Nothing illustrates the importance of full fitness and match sharpness more than the sudden change of gear a team must make to switch from friendlies to competitive games, and how hard they find it to do so. In their SPL curtain-raiser last season, Celtic huffed and puffed before eventually beating St Mirren at Parkhead. The season before that, they couldn't find a way past Kilmarnock and marked the unfurling of the championship flag by dropping two home points.

The fear is that the same players who took care of Al-Ahly so convincingly on Friday will suddenly look leaden, sluggish and out-of-touch confronted by a perky Russian side which has been in more or less continuous competitive action since March. This is a timing and conditioning problem by no means unique to Celtic: Rangers had to deal with it against FBK Kaunas a year ago. Having played only friendlies before it, they collapsed. They drew 0-0 at Ibrox, then lost the second leg in Lithuania.

That eliminated them from Europe altogether but a revamp of the Uefa competitions means Celtic will at least have the safety net of entering the fourth qualifying round of the Europa League if they are knocked out by Dynamo.

They will surely not face a defence as obliging as Al-Ahly's, which stumbled and stuttered at Wembley and did not properly mark, close down, tackle or hold an offside line for four of the five Celtic goals. Marco-Antoine Fortune has looked slightly cumbersome and failed to score so far but he will improve and he offers a freshness in the forward line just as Landy N'Guemo and Danny Fox do in midfield and defence respectively. But N'Guemo and Massimo Donati do not convince as a midfield pairing which will offer goals in the absence of Scott Brown (despite Donati's opener against Al-Ahly) and it will be down to Shaun Maloney and Aiden McGeady to supplement the threat from Fortune and Scott McDonald. Glenn Loovens and Gary Caldwell can offer an aerial menace from set-pieces.

A goal will have to come from somewhere. For Celtic, it is a tie that may well be won or lost in Glasgow.

James McCarthy was born in November, 1990. That makes him just 18, still a wet-behind-the-ears wee laddie.

To listen to this exciting young footballer, though, you could get the impression he'd been around for decades.

"If Celtic had paid the money I would have been happy to go there as I'm a lifelong fan of the club," he explained as he signed instead for Wigan last week.

"Lifelong" fan? At 18? Okay, okay, we all know what he meant, but surely a bloke has to serve a bit of time in the stands, know a bit of hardship, build up a hinterland of joy and suffering before talking with world-weariness about being a "lifelong" supporter? Roy Aitken and Tommy Burns left Celtic before James was born. He is too young to remember Stuart Slater or Wayne Biggins. He was only six when they signed Henrik Larsson.

The fact is, James McCarthy is an exceptional teenager with his whole life ahead of him.