TONY Andreu owes John Collins a debt of gratitude.

Not only was it the then Livingston director of football's French connection which first brought the talented Hamilton Accies playmaker to Scottish football when he arrived at Almondvale back in the summer of 2012 from Swiss club Stade Nyonnais, he also happens to be dating the Celtic assistant manager's daughter, Julia.

While the 26-year-old Frenchman will offer his potential future father-in-law a cheery welcome before kick-off at Celtic Park today, such pleasantries will be forgotten when the action starts in earnest.

"John brought me here," said Andreu. "I think he improved myself and the other players.

"Him and John Hughes were a great management team for Livi and to come from Switzerland to Scotland was a really good step for me. I am grateful, because it is always good when someone gives you confidence, although after that it was down to myself to keep playing the way I did.

"I will say hello to him, but I will focus on my game," he added. "Even if it is Celtic Park in such a big game we want to go there and win."

As a teenager Andreu graced the youth ranks of Monaco, the same club that Collins helped take to the latter stages of European competition during the mid 1990s.

He remembers watching as an impressionable youngster when the same player swept in that nerveless penalty during the opening game of the World Cup in 1998.

Collins' sudden ascension to one of the bigger jobs in Scottish football may have come as a surprise to some, but not to Andreu.

"I knew him as a player," said Andreu. "My first World Cup was 98, when he scored against Brazil, which I remember really well.

"It is a good thing to have a manager with these kind of experiences, because he was able to pass these experiences to the players.

"I knew when I joined that he had already been a coach at Hibernian and done well so it isn't a surprise to me that he is doing well.

"He is very professional, a good coach or manager who gets close to players and young players as well. I think it is important when you have good people behind you like him."

Andreu's time in Scottish football has more than borne out the faith Collins once showed in him.

Of the 15 goals he steered in during Hamilton's promotion push last season, none were more crucial than the 90th-minute strike against Hibs in the play-off final second leg, which condemned the Edinburgh club to a spell in the Championship.

A further four goals in all competitions have arrived this season, not a bad return for a will-o'-the-wisp type who might have been expected to crumble amid the rough-and-tumble of the Scottish game.

"I thought before I came here that Scottish football - and British football in general - was kick and rush and you're going to compete for the ball in the air," he said. "So I was surprised when I went to Livingston and we played football and it's the same at Hamilton. It suits me as a player."

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, though, about this afternoon's match is that Hamilton travel to the east end of Glasgow with a three-point advantage in the Premiership table. The teams may be in false positions, but Andreu can only be emboldened by the point eked out here by Lanarkshire rivals Motherwell immediately after Celtic's last Europa League adventure.

"If someone had said that before the start of the season we would not have believed them," Andreu said. "But this is a good game for them as well because we are ahead of them and they will want to win. Celtic have a lot of international players but I think we can cope. We go without fear."

This is Andreu's first chance to play at Celtic Park, but he was in attendance for the 1-0 Champions League defeat to Barcelona last October.

"When you see that you just want to be on the pitch," he said. "Sunday is going to be our turn."