The curtain will come down on Celtic’s European season this week with the visit to Manchester.

The game against Pep Guardiola’s team at Celtic Park was arguably the best of the campaign and although it is a game that means nothing in terms of qualification now, there is plenty of pride to play for.

Although it is the Champions League and it is an away game in Europe, there is also the element of game between a Scottish and English side which always invokes an additional bit of spice. Fair enough, there probably aren’t too many English players that will start that game but there is always the incentive of flying the flag for Scottish flag when you play against a team from the Premier League.

There is no question that Celtic will want to go down there and finish on a positive note.

This is the last European game now until next July. The best way to bow out is with a strong performance against an excellent City team.

It is not the easiest of grounds to go to but I think we have seen a gradual maturation in Celtic’s performances over the piece in Europe this season. Of course, that game in Barcelona was a real disappointment as was the home game against Borussia Monchengladbach but there was a definite improvement after both of those.

They really dusted themselves done for the City game and then against Barcelona, the best team in the world at the minute, there were aspects of the performance that were heartening.

It augers well going forward. The goal this season was to get into the Champions League and the next step is to try and sustain involvement in the competition beyond Christmas.

But it is still early days and I think what we have seen over the last six months give genuine substance to theory that this is a Celtic team capable of taking it a step further.