Hoops assistant Chris Davies has insisted that there will be no excuses if Celtic fail to get past Astana in the third qualifying round of the Uefa Champions League next week.

Celtic face a gruelling journey to Kazakhstan on Monday as they look to get beyond Astana and into the group stages of Europe’s premier competition.

Aside from the lengthy travelling time, Celtic will play in temperatures expected to be in excess of 30 degrees – and on another plastic surface.

However, Davies has shrugged off a draw that was arguably as difficult as Celtic could have got at this stage of the tournament.

“Ware trying to create an environment - and in fairness the players are good like this - where there is a no excuses environment,” said the Englishman. “We know about the travel, we know it’s an astroturf pitch, we know these things but we are trying to focus on the positives and how excited we are to be there.

“We hoped we would do the job last night, we were confident we would do so and we are in the next round. We are looking to the positives, we are excited to be there and we know we can do a job there.”

Celtic have been criticised for not bringing in players sooner given the magnitude of the games they are involved in, but Davies has echoed Brendan Rodgers by insisting that the remit for the club has been in attracting the right kind of player rather than been panicked into adding players to what is an already bloated squad.

“We have a reasonable sized squad, so we need to bring in quality that improves the team,” he said. “Of course it would be a big boost for us going into that really important game in Astana.

“It is going to be a test. Last season, they got points off Benfica, Galatasaray and Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, all at home. They were also unbeaten at home in the qualifying rounds.

“We know we have to be ready to do a job over there, so anything that could help us, we will be pleased with.”

And Davies has also called Glen Driscoll, head of performance at the club, as the specialist for preparing teams for journeys such as the one Celtic are about to undertake.

“Glen is brilliant at this,” he said. “He has got a lot of experience from Chelsea and Liverpool with the Champions League and the travel. This is his speciality. He is fantastic at this type of thing – planning the travel, planning the time zone so that the players are in the optimum physical condition to perform. He is very good at it.”

Meanwhile, Davies hinted that Efe Ambrose could find his time at the club is up.

“All I can say about Efe is that since we’ve come in here he’s been great to work with every day, his personality and his attitude to training, and he’s given everything he can, every session and every day,” he said. “He’s been a pleasure to work with on a day to day basis but we’re obviously assessing the whole squad and assessing what we need to bring in to improve and take the team forward and there might be opportunity for players to move on. At the moment we’re concentrating on all the players we’ve got, in this building at the moment, they’re all important to us because they’re our players.”