Celtic and Rangers' European opponents both earned themselves strong victories in their respective leagues last weekend - in preparation for this week's Europa League ties.
Simone Inzaghi's Lazio put in a helluva shift away from home against Serie A giants AC Milan at the San Siro to grab three massive points.
Star men Ciro Immobile and Joaquin Correa both scored either side of a Bart Jacinto Quissanga own goal to seal the valuable points and take the Roman outfit to fourth in the table.
Meanwhile, Rangers' matchday four opponents FC Porto won 1-0 in the Primeira Liga against Aves thanks to an early Ivan Marcano strike.
The favourable results come as both Celtic and Rangers themselves managed impressive victories in their respective Betfred Cup semi-finals against Hibs and Hearts at Hampden.
Neil Lennon's lads put five past Paul Heckingbottom's Easter Road side in a 5-2 win that cost the latter his job.
And Steven Gerrard's Light Blues also won 3-0 to set-up a powderkeg cup final later this year.
Celts currently lead Europa League Group E with seven points from a possible nine, having beaten Lazio 2-1 last time out at Parkhead.
Gers are second in Group G after a 1-1 draw away in Portugal almost a fortnight ago.
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 here