Celtic host Leicester now tomorrow evening at Celtic Park and I think it will be a cut above a regular pre-season friendly.

I always think that when the English Champions and Scottish Champions go head-to-head under any circumstances you can expect to see a fair bit of needle and I would expect no different tomorrow.

Of course, Celtic are significantly further on in their pre-season preparations than Leicester are and I do wonder whether or not there will be an opportunity to see the likes of James Vardy who was away on international duty at the European Championships.

In my day we always felt that we were more than a match for any team south of the border and I suppose on lots of occasions that belief was backed up by some of the results we got when we did come up against them.

It is different days now. We all know that the disparity of revenue means that the English Premiership has become the richest league in the world with the wherewithal to attract the best players and the best coaches while up here in Scotland we haven’t had much of that cash filter through.

But I always think as a player that there is a certain amount of professional pride when it comes to a game like this and you want to go and out and give a solid account of yourself. There were a few spicy pre-season clashes against Premiership teams like Manchester United when Martin O’Neill was in charge at Celtic and it would be nice to see a decent game again tomorrow.

The fact that Celtic will be using it as preparation for the midweek tie over in Kazakhstan should dictate in any case that they treat it relatively seriously.