Ronny Deila, the Celtic manager, has been urged to prioritise a Europa League run ahead of the SPFL Premiership by the club's former striker, Chris Sutton.
The six-game group campaign begins tomorrow night away to Red Bull Salzburg in Austria.
Sutton's view was that Celtic will win the Scottish title, so there are league games in which they can rest players in order to ensure their key men remain ready for the main domestic tests.
"Celtic should prioritise the Europa League," said the 41-year-old who signed from Chelsea in summer 2000 for a fee of £6m and went on to score 86 goals in 199 appearances for the Parkhead club.
"They can afford to drop points in the Premiership and still win it, because they are far and away the best team in Scotland. But the players will get a real shot in the arm from performing in the Europa League. There's no reason why they can't do that."
Deila was criticised for playing a weakened team which lost in Inverness last month, but Sutton - part of the team which reached the Uefa Cup final in 2003 - said that would always come with the territory at Parkhead.
"That's never changed here," he said. "My view is that if they get their best 11 players on the pitch they are a strong team who can compete with anybody. The treble is still on, but I think this competition is one where the players will want to be judged and compete.
"They will feel the cup competitions are the ones they should really go for because they can afford to drop points in the league. Criticism comes with that, but that's the way it is at a club like this.
"But the first two games in this group stage are crucial. The main thing in Salzburg is 'don't lose the game'. The first two games are the hardest two for Celtic."
Celtic's second match following the fixture in Austria is at home to Dinamo Zagreb on October 2.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article