SUPPORTERS don't win football matches, right? How can that old line about the fans at Celtic Park being a 12th man be anything more than cliched old claptrap when it comes to Manchester City and the impossibility of throwing seasoned world superstars like Sergio Aguero and David Silva off their stride?

Well, you might be surprised. Stats show that Century Link field in Seattle and Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, the two American football stadiums which are vying for the record decibel level recorded at a sporting ground, cause a clear increase in false start and delay of game penalties as visiting teams literally cannot hear themselves speak.

Not only are West Ham struggling to adjust to the new dimensions of the Olympic stadium, their fans are now seated a fair distance from the playing surface and nothing like as hostile - apart from towards each other, that is.

And Manchester City certainly felt the noise at Celtic Park three weeks ago. Brendan Rodgers knows that because he spoke to former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher afterwards. On Wednesday night it will be Borussia Moenchengladbach's turn to look out the earplugs.

"The people I spoke to after the game – celebrities – said they had heard nothing like it before," said Rodgers. "I spoke to Noel Gallagher and the last game he was here for was the 6-2 game against Rangers under Martin O’Neill. He said the Man City game was at another level in terms of noise."

The fans don't do all this by themselves, of course. Anyone with a grasp of crowd dynamics knows it is incumbent on the home team to give their fans something to shout about. The way Celtic stormed out of the traps against Pep Guardiola's side and took an early lead gave the Parkhead support something to shout about, while an early goal from Borussia on Wednesday night would have the opposite effect.

“It’s a combination of both," says Rodgers. "The crowd don’t get to that level if the team aren’t performing but we do have a real special connection at the minute between the supporters and the players. We started the Man City game, like we have in all games, with great intensity and the crowd feed off that. It was a special night although it was obviously disappointing that we didn’t win the game and that’s why I was a bit sullen afterwards. But the performance of the players was brilliant and so were the supporters."

While the crowd inspires their own players to give that little bit more - if things are going badly against the team, it can equally cause players to retreat into their shells - midfielder Nir Bitton believes even City's raft of world superstars collectively lost their heads in the cauldron which was Celtic Park three weeks ago. He knows it because he saw the look of panic in the whites of their eyes. A shell-shocked City side still appeared to be suffering the after effects when they crumbled in the face of a similar pressing onslaught from Barclays Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur the following weekend.

“The atmosphere lifts us, everyone saw that against City," said Bitton. "They had world class players and for the first 20 minutes they were in shock. If you see Aguero, David Silva, you could see they were in shock. There was panic in the defence and the players were just shooting the ball.

“Aguero has played for a long time in the Premier League but with all due respect, they won’t have faced that kind of atmosphere in the Premier League. No stadium has that atmosphere. You don’t normally see that kind of thing from Pep Guardiola’s teams. I don’t think they were ready for it. That night the atmosphere was the best I have ever played in, I can’t compare it with anything else. Celtic Park on European nights is something different, it gives you goosebumps.

"We just need to make sure we make the most of it. We need to make sure 'Gladbach are just as thrown. It’s about how we start the game and how we play. The crowd can help but we can’t give their players space and time. We need to press them the same way as we did against City.”

So well did Rodgers' side perform against Manchester City that it is at least possible that some complacency may have crept in - to the supporters as much as the players - ahead of Wednesday night's meeting with a Moenchengladbach side who sat ninth in the Bundesliga prior to last night's match against Hamburg. Neither are Borussia known as the best of travellers - having won just four times on the road in more than a year under new manager Andre Schubert. Bitton is armed with some expert inside information from his German-based friend and countryman Almog Cohen, whose Ingolstadt side lost 2-0 to them in September.

Football has been known to confound expectation but the likeliest outcome is that Celtic's back-to-back meetings with Moenchengladbach will determine whether the Scottish champions live on in Europe beyond Christmas in the Europa League. Rodgers reckons four points from the two match is an attainable target.

"If we can come out of the back-to-back games with four points it puts you in a great position," he said. "It is tough but if you are being realistic that is what you have to aim for. You look to win your home game and get something away from home, though it is not a disaster if you don’t.

"I don’t think [the crowd will be complacent against Borussia]. They are well schooled in European football and will have seen the growth of Borussia in recent years. They haven’t started the season so well this year but they are a talented team. They play 3-4-3, young [Thorgan] Hazard has been a big talent for them, they have a young boy [Marcus] Christensen on loan from Chelsea and a good, young, highly gifted squad. It will be a tough, tough test for us."

Rodgers was an interested spectator for the Scotland matches last week, even if only one of the four Scots in his squad with recent Champions League experience (Scott Brown has of course retired) started either match, Kieran Tierney against Slovakia. While Leigh Griffiths has also had to play second fiddle to Moussa Dembele in the Champions League thus far, Rodgers feels he has a major part to play for his team in Europe this season.

While the Celtic manager backs his predecessor, national team boss Gordon Strachan, the Celtic manager reckons everyone in Scotland must take a page out of his native Northern Ireland's book and first be honest about how far they have fallen before attempting to build themselves back up. "I know it is probably hard not to think we should be beating Lithuania and we should be beating Slovakia but I remember reading reports when we were playing FC Astana of Kazakhstan that we should be steam-rolling them," said Rodgers. "Scotland haven’t qualified for what 20 years so I think there needs to be an aligned expectancy and a real hurtful assessment of where Scotland is at. Once you recognise where you are at and wake up to that element then things can then be put in place for growth."