Peter Lawwell: Celtic could be Britain's biggest club in Premier League

Brendan Rodgers will take his side to the Etihad Stadium to meet City on Tuesday evening after finishing bottom of a tough Group C that also included Barcelona and Borussia Monchengladbach. Barca and City are already through to the last 16 with Monchengladbach finishing third to qualify for the Europa League.

While City are backed by Abu Dhabi sheikhs, attracted by worldwide TV exposure and a three-year broadcasting rights deal worth over £8 billion, Scottish football earns a paltry £15m a season from Sky Sports and BT Sport with Celtic Scotland's blue chip brand in green and white.

It has prompted Lawwell to suggest Celtic would be better off financially without live TV in the Scottish Premiership because they could generate more revenue by playing all their matches at 3pm on a Saturday and attracting more revenue from supporters.

Bouyed by the club's Irish diaspora and roots, Lawwell believes the former European Cup holder's history and global fanbase would quickly see them rival the English games traditional giants such as Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal if they were allowed access to the game across the border.

“Because there is no barrier then; we have the whole bit so there would be no barrier to where we could go," said Lawwell.

"We have got the profile of a big European club but we don’t have domestic TV revenues. Our fundamentals are so strong.”

Celtic lead the Scottish Premiership by eight points from 13 matches having played three games less than nearest rivals Rangers and dropping only two points out of a possible 39.

They have collected two points from the section against City and Monchengladbach only six months after former Liverpool manager Rodgers was appointed manager of the club he supported as a boy.

While Celtic are expected to collect around £30m for qualifying for the group stage of the world's biggest club tournament, Lawwell admits the section has been a tough test against teams from three of Europe's major and richer leagues.

"I think the gap has widened," said Lawwell.

“To be fair we were in the most difficult group; we had an English team, a Spanish team and a German team this season.

"Perhaps in a different group, it might have been a different story."

Celtic would be among the biggest clubs in the Premier League. Rodgers has already said they would be in the top four. Yet it remains a bit of a tired and vexed debate.

Celtic and their Glasgow foes Rangers probably outgrew Scottish football a long time ago, starting from the days when Graeme Souness started spending like a drunken sailor when he became Rangers manager in 1986, but there does not seem to be a natural law that would affect change to grant them their wish of moving to England.

The Premier League clubs would not vote for Celtic or Rangers playing in their league because it would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Can you imagine a relegation-haunted Sunderland seeing this as good news? It would make the competition even more ferocious to gain access to the Premier League. As a club, Celtic are hardly smaller than anything the Premier League can offer, but the financial disparity is huge.

The distance between Glasgow and Manchester is only 214 miles, but in terms of money it is a world away. As far as Glasgow is from the Gulf. Still, Celtic must aspire to better themselves.

The 3-3 match between Celtic and City remains one of the greatest games of 2016, and the massive gap in finances was nowhere to be seen.