Peter Lawwell has promised to support Ronny Deila’s Champions League ambitions.
Celtic will kick off next season in the second qualifying round of the Champions League in early July.
KR Reykjavic and Cliftonville have provided token resistance in recent seasons but Maribor and Shakhtar Karagandy have tested Celtic to the full.
With the exception of Craig Gordon replacing Fraser Forster in goals Deila went into the Maribor matches with the squad that he inherited from Neil Lennon.
In July Deila will be without Jason Denayer as he attempts to plot his way through three qualifying rounds.
Bringing in new faces at the same time as playing for a £25m windfall will test the Celtic boss to the maximum but Lawwell is hoping to complete some early transfer business to build on the impact created by January signings Gary Mackay-Steven and Stuart Armstrong/
“We’ve been planning for a number of months now and our key task now is to qualify for the Champions League again,” the hoops chief told the club website. “So we have been preparing our plans for what we want to do. Hopefully we’ll be able to go into the Champions League stronger than we are at the moment.
“We’ve got a very strong squad and a lot of great young players coming through but our intention is in positions where we feel we can strengthen, that we’ll hopefully do that over the summer.
“It’s never easy. We have to do it within our financial constraints, timing is an issue – we need to get players in, preferably, before the qualifiers, but normally you can see in transfer windows that most of the business is done at the end.
“So these are the challenges, we’ve been planning for them, we face them. We’ve got a lot of experience in terms of dealing with these sorts of circumstances, but I’m really confident.
“As I said, we’ve got a fantastic foundation to take this club forward and achieve what we all want- which is to continue to dominate in Scotland and participate in the Champions League and get as far as we possibly can.”
The draw for the second round Champions League qualifiers will be made on June 22 with Celtic seeded for each stage through to the fourth and final qualifiers.
