Two decades on, former Celtic manager and captain Billy McNeill still moved by 'strange' game

Even now, 20 years after his last direct involvement in a Celtic v Rangers fixture and when his connection with football is an accumulation of memories, Billy McNeill can still be stirred by the prospect of an Old Firm encounter. As a survivor of the rivalry, in all of its torments, he understands it most closely as a test of character, something to be endured.

"Some people are just frightened by it," he says in a voice grainy with age but still full of force. "They just can't adjust to it." Neil Lennon has selection decisions to make ahead of Rangers' visit next Wednesday, most pressingly in defence, but McNeill knows from experience that the Celtic manager will be choosing players in the hope that they will handle the occasion: the sheer tumult of it all.

"It's an unusual game; you pick people who you think will be positive and who will adjust to it, but you don't know until they get playing," he says. "It can be their destruction as well, that's happened so often in the past. It's personality. The atmosphere is totally different from other games. It's a mass of spectators and it's just strange how some players can't adjust to it."

McNeill is firm in his praise of Lennon, in particular the way the Celtic manager dealt with the run of poor form that left his team 12 points adrift of Rangers. At one stage, Celtic were trailing 3-0 at half-time away to Kilmarnock, but recovered to earn a draw. Lennon relished the adversity – he is never more engaged than in a confrontation – and has emerged from it a stronger, more certain manager.

If there is a concern for McNeill ahead of this next Old Firm game, it is in the absence of Daniel Majstorovic. He once doubted the merits of the centre-back, but has become impressed by his stature and resilience. After breaking his cheek bone last weekend, the Sweden internationalist will be out for six weeks, and it is the experience that he carries, the sense of having encountered so many of the game's dilemmas before, that McNeill believes Celtic will miss.

"He's proved to be a real gem of a player," McNeill says. "As much as anything, his experience is terrific. He's very positive and straightforward. That's what concerns me a little bit. But Neil has put in quite a lot of players that there was a question about and they seem to have adjusted positively."

Lennon has been forced to use nine different centre-back partnerships this season, with injury interrupting every time one of his defenders manages a run of form. Despite the calamities he was prone to earlier in the season, Majstorovic had recovered his poise to become the most reliable of Celtic's centre-backs, and would have brought the nous and physical might needed to compete with Nikica Jelavic.

With Kelvin Wilson returning to fitness after 10 weeks out with an Achilles injury, Thomas Rogne back in contention, and Charlie Mulgrew and Victor Wanyama playing solidly at the back in recent weeks, Lennon at least has options. His choice will be shaped by the need for his players to be resolute and spirited, since they were overwhelmed in the first Old Firm game of this season at Ibrox. McNeill shudders at the recollection.

"It's never a nice game to lose," he says. "But maybe it assists them. Neil's been very positive in what he's done, how he handles the team and how he judges how they're playing. That is something that's really powerful. It is an important [game]. It's not just that you've got to win it to win the league, it's that you've got to win it because it's Rangers."

There are quandaries in defence for Lennon, but in attack his only choice is likely to be between Georgios Samaras, who has been roused by Old Firm games in the past, and Anthony Stokes, who has yet to make an impact against Rangers. Samaras can be an enigmatic figure, although McNeill believes that he may rise to the occasion.

"I went down to Manchester not long after Celtic had signed him and all these City fans were there," McNeill recalls. "So I said to them, 'what like is this Samaras that you've sent up to us?' They all went quiet. So I said, 'c'mon'. One said: 'he's fookin' hopeless'. He's got ability, I'm just not sure that he utilises it. Maybe it'll be the right game for him."