Martin O'Neill admits Celtic's Champions League qualifiers could be "fraught with difficulty" making recruitment before those games key.
The Parkhead club enter qualifying at the play-off stage - the first leg if which will be played on August 18/19 and second leg on August 25/26.
Celtic suffered the igonimy of crashing out to Kazakh side Kairat Almaty at the same stage last year and the newly appointed permanent manager is under no illusions about the potential pitfalls.
What makes it harder is a lot of the clubs they could come up against will have played more games and potentially be sharper, which can be a leveller against teams they would normally be confident of beating.
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O'Neill admits that causes some concern, even though he remains excited at the prospect of competing in Europe's top club competition.
Asked if recruitment will therefore be key, he told Track Radio: "Absolutely, you’ve nailed it. It’s exactly right. We get a two-legged qualification game come the end or towards the end of August time. We will have started our season - we will be into it by a couple of matches - but the teams that we are likely to face will have had summer times and games in front of us.
"And it’s always - I even felt this going back 20-odd years ago when I was in charge at Celtic—that teams you felt you could definitely beat in, let’s say, early November, you would find really difficult to beat in, let’s say, the second or third week in August because of the match advantages they would have over you.
"So yeah, it’s fraught with difficulty in that sense. Celtic failed last year to make it out, you know, and probably in two games that they would have been expected to go through. So yeah, I would be concerned, but as you say, excited at the same time that there’s an opportunity for that."
