The team he had joined only six months earlier was surging clear in the SPL title race, well on course
to deliver Ambrose's first winner's medal at club level.
However, the chance of a league/Scottish Cup double was overshadowed by the looming Champions League last 16 ties against Juventus.
Ambrose wasn't going to miss any of this, even though he was not scheduled to return from the celebrations which followed Nigeria's African Cup of Nations success until a matter of hours before the first leg at Parkhead.
His culpability in two of the three goals Celtic shipped that bitterly disappointing night led to serious questions about his insistence he was ready to play, and manager Neil Lennon's willingness to take him at his word.
Missing a training session before the return game in Italy - Ambrose has since explained he was on the wrong time zone and singing in the shower when his team-mates tried to warn him the bus was about to leave without him - did nothing to enhance his reputation.
He appears to have used the negative experiences as a wake-up call and, in the past year, has become one of Celtic's most consistent performers.
With the World Cup finals on the horizon - Ambrose gained invaluable experience of playing in Brazil when Nigeria contested last summer's Confederations Cup - he is probably the most focused man in Lennon's squad.
he Hoops boss has encouraged him to cut out the heart-stopping risk-taking, which pock-marked his report card from his first season at the club.
Now, alongside Virgil van Dijk, Mikael Lustig and Emilio Izaguirre, and in front of Fraser Forster, Ambrose has helped erect a green wall which the rest of the teams in the SPFL Premiership are finding impossible to break down.
Ambrose thanks God - literally - for the opportunity to develop into one of the first names Lennon puts down on his teamsheet every week, and, with his help, wants to make 2014 the year of his life.
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