Even taking into consideration the recent abysmal form of our opponents, the fact that several of Celtic's key performers had been involved in international duty the previous week meant that caution was the order of the day.

John Hartson, Jackie McNamara and Rab Douglas were the three internationalists who had to be content with places on the bench for this one with Tuesday night in mind. Making a return to the defence was Johan Mjallby playing alongide Bobo and Varga. There were also returns for Thompson and Miller who went into their familiar midfield positions alongside Lennon, Petrov and Agathe. The old faithful partnership of Sutton and Larsson were chosen to provide the firepower up front.

The first half in general was a fairly scrappy affair with both teams struggling to find the link between midfield and attack. United had a Billy 'who's yer faither in law' Dodds goal chopped off after Bobo was assaulted in the box. It was Celtic who took the lead though after Chris Innes made a balls of a simple clearance allowing Chris Sutton to collect the ball and curl it round Gallacher from just inside the box to make it 1-0, which was to be the score at half time. The second half saw two changes for the hoops, Varga (who had been booked and was treading on VERY thin ice after 
one or two dodgy challenges) being replaced for Jackie and Magnus 'O'Donnell' Hedman making way for big Rab Douglas between the sticks.

Celtic didn't take long to double their lead, a Larsson header from a Petrov corner finding the back of the net following some non-existant marking by the United rearguard. This was essentially game, set and match but with the game over as a contest, humiliated hun reject Dodds decided to stamp his own brand of talent on the game by elbowing Larsson off the ball. Henrik obviously took this personally. Almost immediately following the incident He attempted an outrageous lob from 22 yards out which Gallacher could only touch onto the bar - the ball rebounded out to Chris Sutton who had the easiest of finishes to make it three. Not done yet, Henrik then added the fourth and most spectacular goal of the afternoon, collecting the ball 25 yards from goal , sending two defenders the wrong way with a dummy before 
firing a right foot screamer into the top corner. 'Billy Billy, what's the score' rang out from the away end as Henrik got it right uppim.

United managed a consolation after a speculative Jim McIntyre shot took a deflection off a Celtic defender and trundled past a floundering Douglas (all he wants for Christmas is some confidence) and into the net. Shortly after this Chris Sutton won a penalty and calmly converted for his hat-trick and the fifth of the game for Celtic. A humping. Bring on the Bayern.

Highlight: Henrik's 2nd
Lowlight: Those ridiculous wooden seats in the away end - every time ye stand up to shout at Dodds ye kneecap yerself. Wee bassa.