Stuart Armstrong wants to avoid the “torture” of missing out on a Champions League campaign for the second successive season.

The Hoops midfielder was devastated last term when Celtic missed out on a place in the group stages of the competition at the hands of Malmo.

The Swedes went on to face Real Madrid, PSG and Shakhtar in the group stages of Europe’s premier competition, something that Armstrong found tough to take.

“Everyone wants to get to the group stages,” he said. “It’s a personal ambition of mine, that’s for sure.

“It was torture missing out in the final game last season - and then seeing the group Malmo ended up with. It was upsetting to have to watch and we don’t want to go through that again.”

Brendan Rodgers’ regime at the club got off to an inauspicious start with the 1-0 defeat to Lincoln Red Imps on Tuesday night in Gibraltar.

Celtic need to reverse the scoreline on Wednesday in the second leg but more than simply chalk up the result that will take them through to the next round – where they will likely face Astana of Kazakhstan – they need to up the performance.

And Armstrong will look to this afternoon’s friendly against Wolfsburg as a warm-up for Wednesday’s second leg.

“Playing a team like Wolfsburg will be good preparation because they are a quality side and move the ball quickly,” said Armstrong.” They have quality players and it can only benefit us for Wednesday.

“They are a very good side and probably the best side we’ll have faced so far. The tempo will be high and it will be on a nice surface so I think it will be a good game.”

The reaction to Celtic’s defeat against Lincoln was inevitably savage, but Armstrong has revealed that Rodgers remained calm in the face of the storm.

The Hoops boss got some hackles up when he claimed the result wasn’t an embarrassment, yet it is clearly one of the worst ever European results suffered by Celtic.

“Everyone is entitled to their opinion,” said Armstrong. “Naturally the fans will be upset about the result and the performance,” he said. “We’re not proud of it either. I don’t think you can just hide under the duvet.

“You have to reflect on the game but not dwell on it too much. You need to focus and prepare for the next game. It obviously wasn’t the result the manager was looking for. But he told us just to be calm and to learn from it.

“He was pretty much the same in private as he was in public. His philosophy is that we are all together and pushing for the same thing. He wants us to be very much a team.”