JUST when Celtic think they have seen the worst Group B in the Champions League could throw at them, then comes along a certain Dutchman.

While Bayern Munich may not be the powerhouse they were two years ago, one key and consistent part of the danger they present lies in the feet – or to be more specific the left foot – of the man scampering down the right wing, Arjen Robben.

The Dutch winger gives the impression of having been around for ever yet he is still only 33 and, despite his mature features, there is still a spring in the step of the man Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers once knew well during their time at Chelsea together. He has retained most of the the agility that helped to propel him beyond even the most studious of defenders. It will be the task of Rodgers’ men at the back to keep him and a Bayern side with a point to prove quiet on Wednesday night when Celtic go to the Allianz Arena on Champions League duty. But while he will be hoping to heap more misery on the Dutchman who will not be in Russia next summer, there was nothing but glowing praise from one of his former coach.

“Arjen Robben I know very, very well,” Rodgers said. “Firstly as a player, what a player he was. I worked with him at Chelsea, he was an amazing player. And secondly as a man, he was a great man.

“As a player, people won’t know, but his last game for Chelsea was against Hampton and Richmond [in August 2007]. If Carlsberg did reserve teams I had the best reserve team in the world there. It was [during the transfer] window, we needed a game and as you can imagine [we] had a lot of players. There was just no-one to play against at the time. I said to Jose [Mourinho] the only teams I can get in are two part-time teams.

“I had [Carlo] Cudicini in goal, Juliano Belletti at right-back, who had won the Champions League with Barcelona. I had Alex at centre-half, and I had a young boy Jeffrey Bruma beside him. [Patrick] van Aanholt, John Obi Mikel. Scotty Sinclair on the left side, [Claudio] Pizarro and Arjen on the right. We won 7-0 and Arjen was the captain and scored. The next day he went to Real Madrid. So that tells you about the mentality of him, and the player he was; he was an unbelievable player.”

Away from the pitch, Rodgers has also witnessed Robben's humble and generous side despite his status as one of world football’s stars. He retells a tale about his time as a coach at Stamford Bridge when he took his young players to a prestigious youth tournament in Northern Ireland.

“The second story tells you about him as a person," says Rodgers. "I was taking the first ever Chelsea youth team over to the Milk Cup and it was at the end of the season,” he says. “It was in July, so he was a Premier League winner, and had gone off and was on his holidays. And I needed to take a couple of players with me over to Northern Ireland for the opening.

“It was a function that was on at the Waterfront in Belfast, The Odyssey. I needed to take two players, so I asked one, Mikael Forssell, he was a good guy, a great player.

“He had a terrible time with injury, but he was a big talent. Mikael said he would go. The other one was going to be a push, but I got on really well with him, and that was Arjen Robben. Now, this time Arjen was back home, it was off season, he was in Groningen, and I’m asking him to get to Heathrow for a nine o’clock flight to Belfast.

“So he got the train from Groningen right the way down to Schiphol, and then flew into Heathrow in time for us to be on a nine o’clock flight to Belfast. What an effort that is. God knows what time in the morning he would need to get up.”

It is a generous streak Rodgers has no intention of returning this week. Celtic go to Munich as massive outsiders – some bookies have the Scottish champions at 33/1 for a win. Yet, even confronted with the most arduous of tasks, there is hope.

Not only are Celtic going into the match on the back of an emphatic 3-0 win over Anderlecht, they go up against a Bundesliga side in turmoil. Jupp Heynckes has been brought in for the sacked Carlo Ancelotti who saw his team go down 3-0 to PSG, while they are without a win in three games across all competitions.

“He’s clearly someone who is well respected in the club,” said Rodgers of Heynckes. “He has a great history, not just there but around the world where he has coached and managed. I’ve never come across him but I’m looking forward to meeting him.

“Listen, I even hear people talking about us in for finishing second, so that shows you from where we were 16 months ago, how this group is improving. It's a really exciting challenge. I’m looking forward to going to the stadium; I’ve never been there and it looks an amazing stadium.

“And you look at some of the recent results, even when they’ve taken 2-0 leads they have been pegged back, so of course we need a lot of things to go for us in those games to get results, but this is the team that retained its right to fight and we are not put off easily. From the first game we then go away and get that result and actually our away form in Europe, including the qualifications apart from Astana away, has been very, very good.”