We all remember the painful irony of working for 5+ years thriving in Europe and being the sole flag-bearer for Scotland, building up the coefficient and earning that lucrative automatic Champions League slot all by ourselves, only for Celtic to nick it by winning the league that season.

They got into the UCL by default, while Rangers admittedly still got there by the qualifiers.

Well, it appears Rangers’ incredible work yet again in Europe is earning the winners of the Scottish Premiership the automatic spot once more, with Rangers’ results keeping Scotland in 10th in the coefficient.

10th slot is the magic number – 10th is the last of the auto slots in the coefficient for the Champions League, meaning whichever country is in 11th does not have any automatic group spot for their champions, and they will have to qualify.

Scotland is fractionally behind Turkey in 9th, and fractionally ahead of Czechia in 11th. Scotland was helped hugely by Liverpool slaughtering Sparta midweek, with Milan doing the same with Slavia, while Rangers earned more kudos for Scotland with a huge draw in Lisbon.

The only other threat was Switzerland, but they’re quite a few points behind now, and they have just Servette left in the Europa Conference League last 16. We don’t think even if Servette do scrape past Plzen that they will get enough points to bypass Scotland.

This was all great news for Scotland, and if Milan and Liverpool finish that Czech job off (and they should) that will 99% seal an automatic slot for Scotland’s champions.

Rangers will face Benfica at Ibrox probably being fractional favourites given home advantage, but should Philippe Clement’s side make the quarter finals, that’s pretty much it settled and Scotland’s champions will make the group spot automatically.

MEANING… that after our work gifted Celtic a UCL spot in 2022, our work now would finally, FINALLY earn us the slot for next season IF we can finish the domestic job and win the Scottish Premiership.

But there’s a lot, and we mean, a LOT of work to do before that.

That all said, even in the event of Benfica getting past us, we’re pretty sure Milan and Liverpool are too strong for both Prague sides and Servette aren’t going to do a lot of damage either and the coefficient isn’t going to change.

But crazier things have happened we suppose.