The Old Firm meet at least four times each season, but some of their players also cram in a few extra get-togethers. A significant group spent last week together in a luxury hotel at Loch Lomond and will head to Georgia this week for Scotland’s Euro 2008 qualifier, getting back into Glasgow airport at 4.20am on Thursday, about 56 hours before they reconvene on the pitch at Ibrox for the first Old Firm derby of the season. Is that any way to prepare?

Such is the synergy now between Scotland’s national team and its two richest clubs that the lines between them have blurred. David Weir might find himself picking up Stephen McManus, his international centre-back partner, at a set-piece on Saturday. Barry Ferguson and Scott Brown could be wrestling over the tempo in midfield rather than setting it in tandem.

When Ferguson and McManus meet in the centre circle beforehand, they will have to put aside a friendship that has developed on Scotland duty.

The crossover between club and country is difficult to avoid, but was still a touchy subject around the national squad last week. McManus, the Celtic captain, bristled slightly when his friendship with Ferguson was questioned.

“I think the two of us are easygoing lads who would probably get on with most people,” he replied. “There are no airs or graces with us, just like any of the other lads in the squad. There’s never a problem with Celtic and Rangers players when you go away, I don’t think there ever has been. It’s a really good squad of players who get on tremendously well and when we’re away together, Scotland is our main aim.”

Previously McManus admitted that he could turn to Ferguson for advice on the pressurised role of being an Old Firm captain. Neil Lennon, his predecessor, even played a memorable prank on his Rangers rival by sneaking into Ferguson’s home to record a video tribute to him from his own sofa after he was made an MBE.

So is getting on with your rival Old Firm skipper part of the job description? “No, you either like someone or you don’t. It’s as simple as that,” added McManus firmly.

Brown and Kevin Thomson certainly get on well, despite one opting for Celtic and the other Rangers. In their days at Hibs they shared a flat together on the Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Thomson recently joked that he couldn’t give Brown any fizzy drinks or biscuits after 9pm or he would have been up all night, yet on Saturday he will have to use other methods to contain his pal’s prodigious energy.

Their battle will be intriguing. The initial perception is that Celtic have better value for their £4.4m outlay on Brown from Hibs than Rangers have for signing Kevin Thomson and Steven Whittaker for £4m from the same source, although the overall outcome of the Scottish title race will deliver a surer verdict on that.

Thomson had hoped that Brown would join him at Ibrox in the summer, but their friendship has survived in any case. “Kevin’s unlucky not to be in the Scotland squad,” said Brown. “I watched Rangers’ game against Lyon and thought he was one of the best players on the park. I am sure the gaffer [Alex McLeish, the Scotland manager] notices that as well and I’m sure he’ll bring him in when he thinks it is right.”

Rangers’ Champions League win in Lyon and Celtic’s at home to Milan fed into the growing optimism about the state of Scottish football after the national team’s win in Paris. Such results give credence to the Glasgow derby as something more than a domestic squabble, and the players take fresh confidence and expertise back to the national team.

“When you look at a Scotland squad now, there’s a huge number from the Old Firm,” said Brown. “In the past, most have maybe come from England.”

The 22-year-old was reluctant to stray too far into Old Firm territory while with Scotland. One subject he did expand on was how much club and country will miss Paul Hartley due to a hamstring injury. Hartley was originally bought to provide the impetus from midfield that Brown has subsequently given Gordon Strachan’s side, but has reinvented himself as a holding midfield player in the Paul Lambert mould.

“He does really well sitting in that hole, just getting the ball and spreading passes,” said Brown. “He did it against Shakhtar and Milan. He’ll be a loss, especially as he’ll be out of the game against Rangers as well.

“He works for the team, he’s one of the best around in that sense. He sits in the hole and makes sure everything in that area is all right. He’s adapted his game. When he was at Hearts he used to be the one bombing on, now he’s sitting and letting other people get forward.

“There’s been a phenomenal change in his game because it’s a hard thing to do, to go from one position to the other, and nobody’s done it better than him.”

Spare a thought on Wednesday for Walter Smith, the Rangers manager, and Strachan, his opposite number at Celtic. Both are patriotic Scotsmen, with a concern for the general well-being of the nation’s football, but they will be watching their key players anxiously in Tbilisi hoping for a Scotland win without injuries being sustained. Celtic have already withdrawn Gary Caldwell and are hoping his knee injury will heal enough to allow him to play on Saturday at right-back, a position that seems to carry a curse at the club after it claimed Mark Wilson and Jean-Joel Perrier-Doumbe in quick succession.

Rangers, in contrast, often field two right-backs, with Whittaker sitting in front of Alan Hutton, although goalkeeper Allan McGregor returned to the club nursing a shoulder injury at the weekend.

With Rangers three points behind Celtic after last Saturday’s defeat by Hibs, the pressure is on Smith to a greater extent than Strachan. He can draw confidence from getting the better of their direct confrontations last season, strengthening an excellent overall record in the derby that stands at 20 wins, nine draws and seven defeats from two spells as manager, but he will be worried that the team’s early momentum has dissipated in defeats by Hearts and Hibs and a draw at Motherwell. Smith insists he is still learning about his squad, and the setbacks will possibly tell him more than the successes at this stage in their development. For example, was it significant that the imposing Lee McCulloch failed to start for Rangers against either of the Edinburgh clubs?

Strachan has just begun his third season in charge at Celtic; he is already on his third Rangers manager after his team’s consistency proved too much for McLeish and Paul Le Guen. In Scott McDonald, scorer of the late winner against Gretna last Sunday, he may have found his version of Kris Boyd, the prolific Rangers striker, while Brown and Massimo Donati have brought vigour to a midfield that was becoming a little staid. Smith may well ask Brahim Hemdani to help Ferguson and Thomson subdue this pairing.

Hutton, meanwhile, is sure to carry the fight to Lee Naylor, who has lacked the confidence and assertiveness of his debut season at Celtic Park thus far in his second, if Aiden McGeady does not keep him occupied.

On the opposite flank, Sasa Papac will look to tame Shunsuke Nakamura, who will be seeking to kill off a growing suspicion that he has a tendency to disappear in the fixture. A Japanese international pitted against a Bosnian one is a reminder that the derby isn’t exclusively a Scottish affair, although the natives are again pleasingly prominent in it.

Naismith ready for baptism of fire

- Mention Saturday’s Old Firm game to Steven Naismith, inset, and he says he ‘can’t wait for it’. Despite being a Rangers fan as a boy, he has never previously attended the Glasgow derby. ‘While I went to lots of other games at Ibrox, my family weren’t the biggest fans of games like that where there’s been problems,’ he says. ‘But I’m sure they’ll go next week. Some folk would say the Old Firm shows what kind of player you are by how you stand up to its pressures, but I feel ready’

- As a 12-year-old, Naismith would train opposite Ibrox, but the Rangers coaches at that age level tended to use the striker as a left-back. The only Ayrshire boy in the group, he felt like an outsider and Kilmarnock was where his professional career got started. Rangers made long work of signing him, £2m eventually doing the job three minutes before the last transfer deadline closed for a player they could have had for free eight years earlier

- He was one of fi ve players signed by Walter Smith last summer who are self-confessed supporters. Lee McCulloch, Alan Gow, Kirk Broadfoot and Roy Carroll all grew up with aspirations to be where they are now. An earlier signing from Kilmarnock, Kris Boyd, used to watch all of Rangers’ matches in the early 1990s and idolised Ally McCoist, who now takes him for shooting practice. ‘There are about one million kids out there who want to play for a team as big as Rangers,’ says Naismith. ‘Now life is a better place. I’m the happiest guy about, but it’s now the hard work starts’ n Fans in the stands can be emotional and irrational. Those more directly involved cannot afford to be. ‘Everybody who plays in this game will be 100% up for it,’ says Naismith. ‘We know this season the Old Firm games will play a big part in the run-in’

- Naismith still lives with his family in Stewarton and appreciates the quiet life. ‘Where I stay everyone knows me as Steven, they don’t say, “Oh, there’s that footballer”, so I don’t get much hassle.’ It is where he will return to next Saturday evening, the calm after a storm