Celtic winger Patrick Roberts is desperate to get one over his Etihad team-mates this week as the Hoops head to Manchester.

The 19-year-old winger, on loan from City until the end of this season, has found his game time limited of late although an injury to Scott Sinclair has opened the door again to the Celtic first-team.

And as Brendan Rodgers’ side prepare for the conclusive Champions League game against pep Guardiola’s side on Tuesday evening, Roberts wants to underline what he has got.

It may seem like a long shot for Roberts to make it into the City team next season but the teenager – whom City signed from Fulham for £12m - is determined to give it his best shot.

“I do speak to people from City all the time,” he said. “They are always calling me, texting and visiting me. They like to see how I am doing here, how I’ve settled in, which is good. They do keep in contact.

“I have never resigned myself to not making it there. I never give up. I showed last season that I could compete with them in training and maybe that’s why I stayed there for a bit – because I did quite well.

“You obviously need to play games and you are not going to play many because there are so many top class players there, so that’s why I went out on loan.

“I never give up. I’ll go back there and show them what I can do. That’s the kind of person I am.

“Everyone writes off the English players at City. They do buy a lot of foreign players, but what they have is a confident, a belief in their ability. You need to give off an aura there but you can’t do that right away, you need to claim a starting position. I’ll get to the end of the season and see what it’s at and go from there.”

In the meantime, though, Roberts wants to help Celtic quell some of the dissenting voices that disparage the Scottish game.

“There can be a negative perception,” he said. “But Celtic games are live on the television, they go all around the world, and people see us in the Champions League. The football is tough up here.

“Every team we play wants to get a result from Celtic Park, so it’s a good test for me.

“It’s another game in the Champions League against a massive club. I want to be positive and play the best I can. We want to go out on a win. The results haven’t been the best but it was a tough group and we have got to take experience from it and build on this for next season.

“We will be playing a top team from England and its’ important, especially for myself, because I am going back to a club which I was at for a while. Everyone watches what happens down south and we want to show that we can compete at this level.”

Celtic have already shown that they can hold their own against City, with a pulsating draw in Glasgow the highlight of this season’s campaign.

The club drew 3-3 that night to halt Guardiola’s perfect record and Roberts would love a similar performance on Tuesday night.

“Despite the way we were playing and how dominant we had been in the cups and league, everyone thought City would come up here and hammer us,” said Roberts. “We showed resilience and that we could play football.

“The manager got us pressing and playing football and we took a point off City which they probably didn’t expect us to do.

“After the Barcelona game, everyone might have thought that we would get run over in the group. However, we knew what we were capable of, the manager had heaps of belief in us and made sure that didn’t happen again.

“We went into that game with confidence and looking to get the best result. We showed we can play. It was a good night.”