Ramon Vega is feeling a sense of deja vu.

The former Celtic defender spent just six short months at Celtic. He arrived at Parkhead looking to resurrect his career. He left a club hero.

Vega became a key part of Martin O'Neill's domestic treble-winning team in 2001 - the first Celtic side to achieve that feat since the legendary Jock Stein's men did it in 1969.

The Swiss defender played 26 times and lost just twice. He also scored four times for the Hoops - including twice on his debut in a 6-0 home rout of Aberdeen - and featured in three games against Rangers. Needless to say, he won every derby contest too.

Now Vega is looking at Celtic's Canda international Alistair Johnston and reckons history could be all set to repeat itself.

Johnston signed for the Hoops in January - just as Vega did in 2001 - and almost immediately picked up the first trophy of his career last month when Celtic defeated Rangers in the League Cup final at Hampden Park.

"The first of many", said Johnston in the aftermath. And Vega finds it hard to disagree with that sentiment.

Although if the Swiss former centre-back could dish out any advice to the Hoops fans' new favourite it would be simple: always focus on the next game. If he does, he may find that the treble will come to him naturally.

With a healthy lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership, Ange Postecoglou's men look certain to retain their league crown but the Hoops head to Tynecastle on Saturday to take on Robbie Neilson's Hearts in a mouth-watering Scottish Cup quarter-final clash with the domestic treble ostensibly on the line.

READ MORE: Inside Martin O'Neill's 2001 Celtic treble-clincher

"Are Celtic going to win the treble again? It looks like it, doesn't it?" Vega told The Celtic Way. "That would be brilliant. I watched the League Cup final against Rangers and I was cheering on Celtic.

"It was great to see them win the first trophy of the season. I've experienced that feeling on winning the treble with Celtic already. It's always nice for the club to repeat that. You never forget these memories of beating Rangers and winning the cup.

"We beat Rangers in the League Cup semi-final and, after we did that and lifted the trophy, we were confident of completing the job. It's one of the nicest things you can ever do in Glasgow, win the treble.

"I look at Alistair Johnston who has come in and, if he wins the treble, will emulate myself and I think that would be amazing. He will only have been at Celtic for five or six months like I was so to capture the treble at the first time of asking would be a fantastic achievement for him.

"Celtic look like a team who are capable of winning it. I think the chance of it happening is quite high but, if I were Johnston, I would not be concentrating on the treble at all. I would just be taking it on a game-by-game basis.

"It all goes by very quickly and before you know it Johnston may find that he has won the treble anyway."

Vega is well aware of the significance a domestic clean sweep for Postecoglou's Celtic this season would carry.

If the Hoops were to win all three pieces of silverware they would eclipse both their own and Rangers' record of seven domestic trebles and move into pole position with eight outright.

The former Tottenham Hotspur defender knows that O'Neill's side were the first team to win a treble in 32 years so it wasn't a regular occurrence for the Hoops back then - yet Postecoglou could lead Celtic to an unprecedented fifth treble in seven years this term.

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The 51-year-old said: "Martin O'Neill's Celtic team were the first to lift the treble since Jock Stein's side did it in 1969. It was not a usual thing for Celtic when I played. It just wasn't a normal thing to do.

"The club was not winning the treble or even the double on a regular basis back then. Rangers were dominating again when Martin came into the club so when his team achieved the treble it was such a major thing at the time.

"But when I came into the club everybody kept their feet on the ground. We had a really great team, full of great characters and great players like Henrik Larsson, Chris Sutton, Paul Lambert and Neil Lennon to name but a few.

"All of that mixed together made us a very successful team. We never thought that we were going to win the treble at any stage, we just went out thinking that we wanted to try to win every game. It wasn't something in our minds that we had to do but we knew as a group of players we had the potential to achieve something special.

"I guess it is a bit like how Ange Postecoglou's team are feeling right now as they will sense the opportunity is there to do the treble as well. Naturally, as a team, because we had put ourselves in a situation where we had the chance to win the treble we grew in confidence.

"We are still talking about Martin O'Neill's team and it is over 20 years since they achieved it. People will still be talking about things like this in 100 years' time. That is never going to be erased - ever.

"The main achievement for us was always winning the league but winning the League Cup gave us a huge confidence boost. That's the nice thing about it: once you start winning trophies and you are successful you start to believe in yourself and the team and you respect each other more and more.

"So you put all your focus into winning the league - then it can all change if you give yourselves a chance to win the treble. Once we won that then our mind was actually focused on lifting the treble. If Celtic can go on and overtake Rangers in terms of the number of trebles by the end of this season then that would be fantastic."

Winning the lot with Celtic within six months remains a defining moment in Vega's football career - so to see Johnston complete the same feat 22 years on would please him greatly.

"It would be fantastic," he said. "I think you can see how much he's enjoying playing for Celtic - but how can you not enjoy playing for the best fans in the world?

"The fans at Celtic Park blew me away. They push you so much, almost over the edge, so you can't possibly let them down. I can see, he's enjoying that so much and I'll be absolutely delighted for him if he wins the treble.

"He has made an immediate impact which is not easy. Coming into a team where it was already playing with a certain rhythm and replacing Josip Juranovic who was a fan favourite, I've been hugely impressed that the way he's adapted to playing under the manager while embracing the inverted full-back role so quickly.

"Trophies and medals are what it is all about with a club like Celtic. That's what counts. It's astonishing to think that Johnston winning the League Cup was the first medal of his career yet, come June, he could end up with three."

The clean sweep has not been completed yet of course but, if Johnston and Celtic do manage to emulate O'Neill's class of 2001, you will hear Ramon Vega's treble yell all the way from Switzerland.