After the roller-coaster of Celtic’s 4-3 defeat against Astana Brendan Rodgers wants to keep the hoops in Europe beyond Christmas.
A makeshift defence struggled badly to cope against the Kazakh champions but in the end Celtic go into Thursday’s group stage draw on an 8-4 aggregate.
Last season Celtic drew three times in their Champions League group and missed out on a place in the Europa League to Borussia Monchengladbach.
“Our aim firstly was to qualify, that is a big achievement with the route that we take and the games that we have to play,” the Celtic boss explained.
“That was the first target, what we would like to do this season is to progress and still be in Europe after Christmas.
“We are going into the highest club level, we will play against some fantastic players, our players will want to improve and get better experiences.
“If we can then still be in European football after Christmas that will be another step forward for us. We’ll look forward to the draw, it’s brilliant for the club.”
At half-time tonight with the score tied at 1-1 Celtic’s qualification looked cut and dried but the loss of two goals before the 50th minute put a different complexion on the tie.
When Astana went 4-1 up requiring three goals in 20 minutes an upset seemed possible but fortunately Olivier Ntcham killed off that prospect in the 80th minute before Leigh Griffiths completed the scoring in the final minute of the match.
The draw for the group stage will take place on Thursday at 4.30pm with Celtic likely to go into Pot 4.