And when the 25-year-old last witnessed an Old Firm encounter in the flesh, he did so with a side order of green cheese.

Maloney, fresh from excelling in his homecoming via the bench against Falkirk, is expected to shake off a knock and win a starting place in Gordon Strachan's side for the first derby of the season. His vantage point at Celtic Park today will be very different to what it was when he watched the two footballing tribes come together in early April. Then an Aston Villa player, he peered from behind the glass of a hospitality box as championship certainties were challenged. Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink's 93rd minute clincher ultimately proved the turning point in the title race. It also proved head-turning for Maloney.

"The derbies are the games you miss the most," he says. "Whenever I've not been there, I've realised how much I miss games like that… well, if you win them, anyway. Jan scoring the winner was the only one I came up for (in my 18 months away] and I was pretty envious. I think it was like that the whole run-in; I was happy for the people here, and still know a lot of them, but at the same time was pretty envious."

Maloney has an envious relationship with the Old Firm encounter. He is one of few players to have made his senior debut in the fixture. As an 18-year-old who had then played only two under-21 games, he was sent on by Martin O'Neill at Ibrox in April 2001 in the 67th minute, and helped Celtic to a 3-0 victory in a post-championship winning success. That experience has no bearing on how he now views the collision of Scottish football's colossal powers. "I probably didn't realise the size of it and things like that back then because it was my first game and I was so young," he says. "You don't really take it all in. It's not a blur, but you just don't realise the extent of it all."

Vying with Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton and John Hartson for attacking opportunities, Maloney soon realised the extent to which he would require to progress to earn a principal role in proceedings. Indeed, it was a further four years, one of these wrecked by a knee-ligament injury, before he started an Old Firm match. Late substitute appearances in four derbies were his lot before he was handed a place in the first XI as Gordon Strachan's Celtic entertained their rivals in a League Cup quarter-final in November 2005. He marked the occasion with a glorious 35-yard strike that represents his only goal in open play against Rangers. "That was a while ago," he says ruefully.

So much has changed at the two Glasgow clubs in the past year-and-a-half, everything from Maloney's first stint at Celtic seems a while ago. He could be one of no fewer than six summer signings to be pitched into the fixture this afternoon. Glenn Loovens is the only other who might do so in Celtic colours, with Marc Crosas certain to be on the bench. Rangers, meanwhile, are expected to field recent recruits Madjid Bougherra, Pedro Mendes, Steven Davis and, possibly, Maurice Edu. With Barry Ferguson injured, that would leave Kris Boyd and Nacho Novo as the only survivors from the last Ibrox side Maloney faced. "At every football club there are a lot of changes in a couple of seasons," he says.

Maloney's connections to both friend and foe at Celtic Park this afternoon suggest that, while it is said everyone in life can be linked by six degrees of separation, in football only three degrees are required. The Malaysian-born forward has worked with all the members of the two clubs' coaching teams, was three months with Davis at Villa –"so I saw how good a player he was," he says – and watched Mendes scoring "a few absolute worldies" when he was down in England.

Maloney, understandably, has high regard for Rangers' management team. Walter Smith awarded him his first cap when running the national side's affairs alongside assistant Ally McCoist and the late Tommy Burns, while the Ibrox club's third-in-command, Kenny McDowall, was reserve coach at Celtic during Maloney's formative football years.

"Walter, Ally and Tommy made it a great time to be involved in the Scotland set-up; really enjoyable," the player says. "The two coaches obviously kept the spirits up and, although we didn't qualify for a tournament, I think it was the start of the national team getting better and they can take great credit for that. Kenny was here for a long, long time and I have a lot of respect for him."

He is respectful enough to predict that the Ibrox coaching trio's input is why the title race "looks like going all the way" again this year, but is energised by the desire of his own management team to "improve" on the "way the way they want to play football". He is central to that, and is capable of providing the funnel for Celtic's attacks to flow through. Without him, Strachan's sides have struggled for fluency. Rarely is that commodity on tap when the ancient adversaries face each other down.

"It is difficult in Old Firm games, well the ones I've played in," Maloney says. "You can be dominant in the game for 20 minutes. Then for the next 20 minutes, quite as easily, Rangers can be just as dominant. I guess it comes down to who scores the goals in the time they are dominating. It does tend to see-saw."

Just like careers that come to life in such an environment. If Maloney is so detached from his Celtic past as not to recognise himself in it, he is now in the position of having a second chance to make a first impression. Rangers might provide the opposition all over again but history doesn't repeat itself without prompting.