THE cruellest but best line of the week was that Celtic would not just allow Mo Bangura to play against them for Elfsborg in Europe, they would actively encourage it.

What better way to assist easy passage to the Champions League third qualifying round than by ensuring the opposition was encumbered with a striker who can't score? That is a little harsh on Bangura, who has managed to find the net often enough for Swedish clubs, but when it comes to his time in Scotland there are few memories of the 23-year-old which extend beyond frustration at best and ridicule at worst.

The Celtic signing model does not deliver every single time - no club's does - and the flip side of captures such as Victor Wanyama and Gary Hooper are deals like Bangura's. He cost them £2m from AIK Stockholm in August 2011, and Neil Lennon is still waiting for anything to show for it. A knee injury accelerated his return to Sweden on loan but his Parkhead statistics are awful: 16 appearances, nearly all of them off the bench, and not a single goal. Celtic cannot afford to sign many like Bangura and Lennon's pleasure at Amido Balde's encouraging performance at Brentford on Saturday was understandable.

If ever Bangura was going to find the net in a Celtic game it would be in this upcoming third-round tie with Elfsborg - the gods dictate that - which is why Lennon quickly made it known he would have a word in his ear and advise him not to play. Bangura has always looked better in Sweden than he has for Celtic. He scored five goals in 15 games on loan at AIK in the second half of last year, including one against PSV Eindhoven in the Europa League, and he's managed six in 16 appearances this year for Elfsborg. One of those was in the 7-1 first-leg rout of Daugava last week.

Bangura wouldn't be generating anger or exasperation or mockery if he was up against Celtic in these crucial, crucial games; he'd suddenly be a figure to fear. Their nightmare scenario is being dumped out of Europe by anyone, but it wouldn't half rub salt in the wound if the winning goal was delivered by one of their own. Football has a habit of tossing up exactly this sort of "comes back to haunt" stories and Celtic cannot expose themselves to that risk (inexplicably, there is no mention of, let alone restriction on, the use of loan players in the Champions League regulations).

Nothing is more important to Celtic in the second half of 2013 than the four European fixtures they hope to negotiate after respectfully finishing off Cliftonville tomorrow night. When he tells Bangura that he won't expect him to play against Celtic, Lennon will be looking for a gentleman's agreement on a matter which is already enshrined in the rulebook of domestic league and cup games: an on-loan footballer doesn't play against the club which ultimately pays his wages.

Bo Johansson, the Elfsborg chairman, spouted off about Lennon's "unacceptable and scandalous" comments and said he would report him to Uefa if he made any threat to Bangura. Well, good luck with that one, Bo. He would do exactly the same if the roles were reversed. In any case, what's said between Lennon and Bangura will be known only to the pair of them and the player isn't exactly likely to grass up his boss for applying some pressure. There are advantages to making loan signings but there are downsides for clubs such as Elfsborg too, and not having total authority over a player is one of them.

Celtic earned the right to project ahead to facing Elfsborg because of a smoothly professional first-leg victory which reduced Cliftonville to mere tourists tomorrow night.

The following evening St Johnstone delivered a far more impressive away result against Rosenborg but cannot yet dare contemplate a place in the Europa League's third qualifying round.

When they lost 2-0 at Eskisehirspor a year ago 6023 turned up on a lovely summer's night for the second leg at McDiarmid Park. The attendance this Thursday will say much about the size of St Johnstone's support these days. Some will be away on holiday, of course, but for the rest this is a game which cannot be missed.

And Another Thing…

At the end of June there was much sniggering about Rangers publicising the fact they had taken delivery of a new luxury team bus. There was nothing unusual about any of our big clubs churning out trivia to their supporters which could be of little interest to the rest of us, but nonetheless it became a source of online ridicule and the "jokes" were trotted out for days.

Maybe it was that level of attention that prompted Ally McCoist to describe the weekend fire-raising attack which destroyed the £500,000 vehicle, as sounding like a "premeditated attack".

The immediate inclination was to despair at the level of hatred and ignorance it would take for someone to burn a football team's bus to a heap of scrap just because they support a rival club. Is that really where we are in 2013?

Then again, the motivation isn't yet known and frankly it isn't the main issue. Breaking into a business and burning it down is sinister, dangerous and pathetic, full stop.

That's why judges don't ask arsonists why they did it before sending them down on long jail sentences.