It’s been a tough old season for Brechin City. Evidence of a last league win, for instance, can only be found in the archives of the British Pathe newsreels.

Perhaps Brendan Rodgers has been flicking through them? “I look at Brechin and I have studied them and watched them and see they are at the bottom of the league,” said the Celtic manager of a side that has been cast so far adrift at the foot of the Championship, the Angus & Mearns Coastguard have just about called off the search.

Today’s William Hill Scottish Cup encounter with the holders and domestic champions will provide some respite from the week-to-week toil of league duty as well as some revenue and the eye-opening razzmatazz that comes with playing in one of football’s great theatres.

The very nature of cup football always serves up mismatches, magical moments and momentoes from a grand day out. Just over 90 years ago, when the famous Glebe Park hedge was possibly just a modest privet, these two sides first crossed swords in the Scottish Cup in 1927 and Celtic won 6-3.

In 1985, the last time the pair met in a knock-out competition, Celtic put seven past their guests in the east end during a lop-sided Scottish League Cup encounter.

Brechin, having shipped 48 goals in the second-tier this season, will be girding their loins for a backs-to-the-wall exercise. Celtic may be operating in a different stratosphere but Rodgers remains full of admiration for Darren Dods, the Brechin manager, and the hard-working men who put in plenty of honest, admirable endeavour for the cause.

“They haven’t won a (league) game and have four draws but when I look at the team, they are playing for the manager,” added Rodgers. “They are a part-time team in what is predominantly a full-time league. The guys there are giving their all. It doesn’t mean we disrespect them. We expect to go into the game, work well and get through it.

“When you study Brechin and watch them it is not as if it is a team that is downing tools and not playing or not working for him. It has been tough for him (Dods), of course, but this game, with 60,000 at Celtic Park will give them some motivation. We just have to focus on ourselves and do what we normally do.”

What Celtic normally do, on the domestic front at least, is sweep aside all and sundry and you’ve probably got more chance of seeing someone putting their entire life savings on the ghost of Evel Knievel becoming the next US President at the bookies as you do of hearing the phrase “I’ll have 20 quid on Brechin please.”

Rodgers certainly won’t be complacent, though. He only has to go back to his Liverpool days to get a warning from history.

“That first season (in 2013) we lost away to Oldham,” he said of a night when the League One Latics ousted the seven-times FA Cup winners in the fourth round. “I changed the team around quite a lot for the FA Cup and we were punished for it. You have got to just be ready and do your work. There can be no complacency.”

With the winter break back in the schedule, Celtic have not had a competitive run out for three weeks. A training camp in Dubai was nice to stock up on the Vitamin D but the players are eager to get back into the cut-and-thrust of full blown activity.

The rest has done the Celtic players and Rodgers himself the power of good after a record-breaking spell in which the long unbeaten run became something of a burden.

“We pressed the refresh button in Dubai and we’re really excited now for the second part of the season,” he said. “The players did brilliantly to get through to that point of the season and through December when it was demanding and a real burden on your physicality and mentality.

“They came through it well, though, and finished the league eight-points ahead at the break. We played a large chunk of the games in that period and now we can recover and get ready for the second part, where we’ll play a lot less games.

“Everyone was in need of a rest. But we’ve had a great period where we’ve rested but we’ve also worked. You can’t just totally rest. We’ve had to work very hard and the players have done that.

“We had the stimulus of going away and working in the heat and breaking the cycle really. If I trace back our success, a lot of it is to do with the spirit in the group and we were able to reinforce that when we were away.

“We made good use of the breather and now we come back and get ready to compete. We’re competitors, that’s our job.”

Brechin, meanwhile, will have a big job on their hands. But that’s the magic of the cup.