BRENDAN RODGERS has now had two sliding door moments in his life.

The first came over two years ago when Steven Gerrard fell on his backside and allowed Chelsea to score at Anfield on a day that more or less ended Liverpool’s hopes of winning their first English league title since 1990.

Luis Suarez who was never going to hang around a club that couldn’t win and Rodgers was sacked within a year after trying and failing to coax even average performances from Mario Balotelli.

None of this happens if Gerrard, a genuine world-class footballer, stays on his feet.

The second came on Tuesday night, in the Turner Stadium in a rural Israeli town called Be’er Sheva, about 25 minutes drive from the Gaza Strip; this time the hand of fate didn’t strangle the now Celtic manager but rather patted him on the back.

Rodgers isn’t daft. He will know that if Hapoel had not lost key players to injury during the match, if they had not missed their chances, and there were plenty of them in the second half, then Celtic would be out of the Champions League.

However, unlike that afternoon at Anfield, the ball bounced the right way for Rodgers and his new team.

“It will feel really, really nice to watch the draw,” said a smiling Rodgers. “It will sink in over the next day or two – the achievement traced back to June 25 and what we walked into. This was our first target.

“It’s amazing to have actually achieved that and it’s a huge success for the club, particularly for the players. Europe will be happy as well when they see a great club like Celtic involved, with our supporters. Hopefully it will be a nice evening and we can get a good draw.

“I am very optimistic, but you can’t get too far ahead of yourself. My thoughts were getting there and it will be nice to see our name in the pot. Then let’s see what the draw is.”

There are only a handful of players at Celtic Park these days who have experienced Champions League football at the club, and those who came after the win over Barcelona have only known tricky times.

Then there were two play-off defeats during the Ronny Deila days and the supporters began to wonder whether the team had it in them to dig deep and win ties as they failed to do against Malmo a year ago.

The players will have gained so much self-belief from a play-off they struggled in but still qualified from.

“I think what I have tried to instil is that they are good guys,” said Rodgers. “They are good players and they needed help in order to achieve what they wanted to achieve.”

During his debrief, Rodgers admitted he had sent a note to Scott Brown during Tuesday's match and even revealed what the cryptic message was.

“It said: 'Any danger'?” said Rodgers. “Seriously, it was just to make sure they understood the shape. If you leave the message with a player, sometimes it doesn’t get on quick enough.

“Scotty’s a great communicator, so Erik [Sviatchenko] gave it to him and he could see the shape of the team and what personnel had to go to what positions and what we were trying to achieve. Rip it up quickly and go.

“I’ve done it in the past. It’s not a book. You have to be short, sharp and concise with your information.

“Listen, the quality of your life is down to the quality of your communication skills. However you get it on there, however it is written, whether it is verbal, you need to get the message on there. I thought we then found calmness.

“The issue was that they were throwing caution to the wind and bombing everyone forward. The problem was on the sides. Initially, they had a diamond in the first half, but the tempo was up for them and we could contain that, so we switched from 4-3-3 to a diamond at the beginning of the half.”

A Celtic team that can change during a game to deal, successfully, with a crisis thanks to a scribbled note. They would never have made a movie about that. Nobody would believe it.