Sutton and Celtic avoid the hangover

Green half of Glasgow has perfect build-up to today's derby

Chris Sutton once incurred the wrath of Marcel Desailly for indulging in an in-flight drinking session on one of Chelsea's trips home from a Champions' League match four seasons ago, but he was quietly tucked up in bed on Thursday night.

The Celtic striker had plenty of company. Henrik Larsson and half a dozen other Celtic players were also part of the lock-in ordered by their manager, Martin O'Neill. They all stayed in Glasgow to prepare for today's first Old Firm encounter of the season, while Celtic's second XI travelled to Lithuania to progress into the second round of the Uefa Cup with a 10-1 aggregate victory over FK Suduva.

Rangers, in contrast, emerged from their European mission weighed down by baggage – and they did not even leave their home city. Alex McLeish's side simply failed to get off the ground in the Uefa Cup, but while the pain of that shock extra-time exit to Viktoria Zizkov will take a long time to erase, the physical strain may be visible today.

A bruising 120 minutes is not the ideal preparation for a trip to Parkhead. O'Neill, who is seeking his first win over McLeish to supplant his rival at the top of the Scottish Premier League, could scarcely have planned things better.

"I'll do what the manager tells me," Sutton said last weekend, when asked if he hoped to get out of the Lithuania trip. The knowing smile betrayed that the former England striker was not looking out his passport. Neither was Larsson. The pair had contributed all five goals in the rout of Kilmarnock, and O'Neill preferred to keep their powder dry for a target much closer to home.

"Every single Old Firm game is an important one and I don't think this has any extra significance attached to it," Larsson said in midweek. "There is still a long way to go and there will be three other Old Firm games in the league this season."

There is no need to hype Glasgow's celebrated derby, but the fact is that Rangers' dramatic win in last season's Scottish Cup final meant that O'Neill had gone four derbies without a victory since McLeish took over across the city.

"The manager isn't the one who is playing, it is the players who have to get out and do it," insisted Larsson. "Sometimes you have little things like that, but we'll treat this game the way we treat every other."

Sutton also refutes suggestions that McLeish has an Indian sign over his boss. "It's the nature of football," he said. "Rangers were bound to come back at us sooner or later because they are a quality side. This term, they are pushing us and it would be nice to get in front of them and go back to the top of the table.

"But if there is one thing I have learned here, it's that you can never predict how these games will go. In my first one, we won 6-2, then we got hammered 5-1 at Ibrox."

It was Sutton's goal after just 50 seconds of that remarkable 6-2 success in August 2000 that launched the O'Neill era, as well as his partnership with Larsson, which now appears back to its best.

The Swede dismisses any notion of a hangover from his efforts in the World Cup. "I had four weeks' holiday when we came back from Japan, which is what I normally get," he said.

"I have never been quick off the mark to score at the start of a season, but I think we are improving and there's no doubt we will soon be playing to the standard we all know we're capable of."