MOST managers talk about parking the bus when they come up against the likes of Celtic. Billy Ogilvie, head coach of East Kilbride, is taking it a step further.

“I have thought about parking my taxi in front of the goal,” said the 55-year-old, who earns his living driving a black cab around the city of Glasgow. “In fact, I nearly went to Central Station to get 12 of them and put them all round the 18-yard box.

“You would be telling lies if you didn’t fear a heavy defeat. I am sure there are managers in the Premiership who fear that when they come up against Celtic.”

Even so, Ogilvie would not trade all the boundary charges in the world for the opportunity he has earned with his players this weekend. A tie with the Premiership champions, Celtic, in the fifth round of the William Hill Scottish Cup in front of a live television audience is the stuff dreams are made of for the Lowland League club that only came into existence five years ago. The unsightly dispute which developed over settling upon Airdrieonians’ Excelsior Stadium as the venue for the match now appears history. It is time to get down to business with Celtic entering the encounter sporting some rather nasty bruises and perhaps a slight sense of vulnerability following their weekend defeat in the semi-finals of the League Cup to Ross County.

Ogilvie was at Hampden to look for reasons to believe in the improbable, if not impossible. Certainly, Celtic have been susceptible to slipping up against lesser opposition in the not-too-distant past.

Clyde famously knocked them out of the Scottish Cup on Roy Keane’s debut 10 years ago while Morton pulled off a real shock in the League Cup at Celtic Park just over two years back, but anything other than a resounding victory for Ronny Deila’s side on Sunday seems unthinkable.

“We are underneath the level of those teams,” conceded Ogilvie. “If we do anything of that magnitude, it would be the biggest shock in world football, without a doubt.

“Don’t get me wrong, we are a team that is coming up, but where we are at the moment and after such a short time in existence, you cannot even think about winning.

“If we did, I would have to retire – or hide.”

East Kilbride are not even the best the Lowland League has to offer.

They sit fifth at the moment, a hefty 22 points behind leaders Edinburgh City.

Ogilvie put his players through a training session on transfer deadline night as Celtic completed their deals for Colin Kazim-Richards and Patrick Roberts, a player who cost his parent club, Manchester City, just under £12m last summer.

That loan deal, as much as anything, showed the gulf which exists between the squads.

“My squad all cost nothing,” said Ogilvie. “They come on trial and we sign them if we like them. There is no fee involved, not even a bag of balls or a tracksuit.

“For most of my boys, this is their second chance in football. For some, it is their third or fourth, but we have not paid one single penny – even for the manager. I’ll have to get that sorted.

“We play for the love of it. We haven’t even thought about a win bonus.”

East Kilbride have also shown great resilience to earn this date with destiny. They required replays to see off Forres Mechanics and Stenhousemuir and dealt with considerable pressure to beat Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale 2-0 in the last round.

Gordon Strachan attended that match at East Kilbride’s unimposing home inside Calderglen County Park and has clearly become a fan.

“The national manager was at the game and phoned me a week past on Sunday,” revealed Ogilvie. “He phoned the Lothian Thistle manager, too, because he absolutely loved the game.

“He told me he sees a thousand games a year and there are people diving, squaring up to each other. He said he saw two extremely committed teams who wanted to play football.

“He asked what he could do to help and, before you knew it, we were in a half-hour conversation about this and that.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the Celtic match. The Lothian Thistle game was the equivalent of the [Championship] Play-Off finals at Wembley for us because of the massive prize. We all went to the chairman’s bar afterwards and I just felt drained. I could have drunk the bar dry and walked home because of the sense of sheer relief over winning.”

Ogilvie will give himself some time to think and plan this Saturday night, though. The prospect of a lucrative shift in his taxi holds no appeal whatsoever.

“I won’t be working on Saturday,” he said. “I would be a danger to the public that night, I think.

“I’ll have a quiet night in the house, a couple of glasses of wine and try to get my head down.”