Celtic, Rangers, Aberdeen, St Johnstone: What Thursday's huge night of European action means for the four Scottish clubs

What our clubs are playing for when the four do-or-die matches begin on Thursday.

The Europa League trophy at the Gdansk Arena in Poland ahead of last season's final between Villarreal and Manchester United. Picture: SNS

What’s at stake?

Celtic and Rangers go away from home to AZ and Alashkert with 2-0 and 1-0 leads, respectively, hoping to see out the job and push themselves into the Europa League (EL) group stages.

Aberdeen and St Johnstone, meanwhile, are hoping to make it to the groups of the inaugural Europa Conference League (ECL). Aberdeen must overturn a 1-0 deficit at home to Qarabag, while Saints will be hoping for a happier home leg against Austrian side LASK than they enjoyed against Galatasaray in the last round after taking a 1-1 draw back to McDiarmid Park.

Prize money

Celtic and Rangers will both earn €3.36 million just from emerging unscathed from their second-leg contests. Once in the EL groups, they can earn €630k for every win, €210k for every draw and €1.1 million or €550k for finishing as group winners or runners-up, respectively. But there’s the added bonus of additional matchday income.

For Aberdeen and St Johnstone, the figures are fairly similar. It’s €2.94 million for qualification, €500k per victory, €166k per draw, while group winners earn €650k and each runner-up €325k.

The co-efficient

Scotland is currently sitting in eighth place but there isn’t a whole lot separating seventh from 11th, so a disaster for our clubs on Thursday would put a hefty dent into our future prospects, including holding on to the lucrative automatic entry into the Champions League group stages, which will be up for grabs for this season’s cinch Premiership champions, and the guarantee of group-stage football (either EL or ECL) for whomever wins the Scottish Cup or finishes third.

There will be 0.2 points added for every team which qualifies. At present, we’re favoured to pick up 0.4, which should still be enough for Scotland to remain in eighth when the groups are drawn this Friday. The more teams we have in the group stages, the more chance we have at picking up further points.

The squads

St Johnstone probably have the most to gain or lose from the outcome of Thursday. Participation in the ECL group stages would be a massive boost for a club that size and possibly help convince some of their key players to stick around longer. Jason Kerr, Jamie McCart and Shaun Rooney have all attracted serious interest in the final year of their contract, while getting further exposure for Ali McCann could see them make a fortune when it’s time to sell.

Rangers have financial concerns, but it’s difficult to judge how much that would be impacted in terms of the difference between the EL and the ECL, as there’s nowhere near the difference in prize money as there is between the EL and Champions League (UCL). Similarly for Celtic, the UCL was the big prize.

Reaching the groups would help push the price up for Lewis Ferguson and keep Ryan Hedges around beyond this season for Aberdeen.

The Premiership

Celtic and Rangers are already assured of six Sunday games at least due to the ECL cushion underneath the EL trap-door, but adding Aberdeen and St Johnstone to the list would give cinch Premiership weekends a real English Premier League feel with so many matches occurring away from the typical 3pm Saturday kick-off time.

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