THERE will be little in the way of comradeship and commonality of purpose between Brendan Rodgers and Steven Gerrard at Celtic Park today. But Callum McGregor recalls the time when he travelled to Anfield and almost left both parts of this formidable Liverpool double act with egg on their faces.

Rodgers was Liverpool manager and Gerrard his club captain and on-field enforcer when the on-loan McGregor’s Notts County side turned up there on Capital One Cup business in August 2013, the League One outfit drawing level and making the Kop sweat through a nerve-shredding period of extra time before succumbing to a 4-2 defeat.

If Liverpool ended that campaign only a Gerrard slip and some naïve defending away from clinching their first title for 24 years, we should know much more about which of these two men will end up with the Ladbrokes Premiership title after a breathless 90 minutes in the East End of Glasgow today.

“It was a good experience, to go and play against Liverpool at Anfield," McGregor recalls. "We were underdogs and played reasonably well. It is always good to test yourself against the best players in the world and Stevie G was definitely up there at the time. He was excellent that night.

“He didn’t speak to me afterwards, he was just focused on his own team. And I was the same. To be honest, having taken them to extra-time, everyone was a wee bit gutted in the changing-room that we never got through. But as a lesser team, we also saw getting them to extra-time as a small achievement in itself.”

The odds on one of those two men washing up in Scottish football seemed slim at that point, let alone both of them. It hardly seems possible, but the first managerial meeting between this double act has succeeded in producing an extra edge toone of the most febrile fixtures in football.

“Sometimes football has a funny way of throwing these things up,” said McGregor. “I was slightly surprised [when Steven Gerrard was appointed] but when he was offered the chance to manage a massive club he took it. That’s what he wanted to do so it’s good for the Scottish game to get as many big names as we can. Down south there will probably be more people tuning in. That’s good for Scottish football so we have to relish that as a nation and a league to try and promote the game.”

Whether Gerrard remembers McGregor’s performance that fateful night in August 2013 or not, Rodgers certainly did.

“When the manager came in I had a wee chat with both him and Chris Davies,” he said. “We spoke about the game and they felt I had done well in it. That was nice to hear, that he was aware of something I had done at another club. But I’ve taken my game to a new level since then. Back then I was young, just starting out on my career and enjoying my football at Notts County. I scored a lot of goals just playing free, attacking football. I came back and had to learn the other side of the game.”

McGregor senses the former England international’s presence is starting to rub off on Rangers, with them having gone 12 games unbeaten, and reached the Europa League group stages. They appear a more formidable outfit than the demoralised unit which was ripped to shreds in the last few matches of last season. Having said that, they haven’t had to visit Celtic Park yet. And McGregor is hoping to continue a scoring streak in this fixture having scored in both of the last two meetings.

"When you watch them now you can tell they have a real team spirit and have good quality all around the pitch,” said McGregor. “They have signed a lot of players, they almost have two for each position now. That competition for places drives the standard up and I’ve always said that has been important here. They have come through the qualification process too which is tough to do so you have to give them credit for negotiating those games. They have had a decent start in the league too.

“But I think we’ve got to use that [the fact Rangers haven’t won one of these matches for a while] to our advantage. The away crowd is going to be a bit smaller than it has in the last few years so we need to try and use that too although I don’t think it will have too big an impact. The home team will maybe have more of an advantage but I think the games will still be have the same hype and the same atmosphere on the day.”

If it was Gerrard who took the game by the scruff of the neck back in August 2013, he meets his counterpoint in the Celtic ranks today in Scott Brown.

“Everybody knows Broony's reputation,” said McGregor. “We see every single day how valuable he is to our team and the players in our dressing-room and I can imagine that Stevie would probably be held in the same regard as that at Liverpool. This is a real high-magnitude game and, as a professional footballer, you’ve got to thrive on that. I’ve scored in the last two and I have four overall. That’s not bad so I hope to add to that.”