CELTIC or Rangers' potential automatic spot in next season's Champions League group stages may be at threat.

The winner of this season's Premiership will likely go straight into UEFA's top club competition next term. 

This will of course rake in a huge financial windfall of around £40million for the Scottish champions.

However, if the winners of THIS season's Champions League have not qualified via their domestic league, then this would spell trouble for Scotland's champions.

It would mean they would still have to go through qualification, entering at the play-off round.

And with Villarreal still in the tournament, that very much remains a possibility - especially when you consider the Spaniards have just knocked Bayern Munich out of the competition at the quarter-final stage.

Unai Emery's team reached the last-four of the tournament on Tuesday night.

They draw 1-1 on the night with the German giants to progress through their tie 2-1 on aggregate, with last season's Europa League winners causing a major upset.

Villarreal sit well below La Liga's Champions League qualification spots in seventh, a whopping 11-points behind Atletico Madrid in fourth.

They will now wait to find out who they face in the semi-finals, as they begin to dream of winning Europe's top trophy.

This scenario hasn't happened since 2012 when Chelsea lifted the Champions League while finishing fifth in the English Premier League.

And it's fair to say that Celtic or Rangers will be praying that it doesn't happen again this year to scupper their straight passage into next season's group stages.

Albeit, should Russia continue to be expelled from UEFA competition during their ongoing invasion of Ukraine, due to the current co-efficient standings, the Scottish champs would then be granted their place - so potentially not all would be lost.