ASTANA manager Stanimir Stoilov is nothing if not an honest man.

He didn’t claim his team couldn’t overturn a 5-0 first leg result, it’s just that he wouldn’t put one tenge - that’s the local currency - on them staging what would be one of the all-time remarkable comebacks in football history.

Before you Goggle it, that’s 0.0023pence.

The vibe out here in the Kazak capital is that there is a lot of hurt pride yet to be mended and while the tie is gone, Astana at least want to win the second leg and then prepare themselves for the Europa League

“I have to be realistic. Celtic are 99 per cent through to the group stages,” said Stoilov. “Our chances are not so great but anything can happen. But, to be realistic, Celtic will be going through.

“Barcelona can do these kind of unreal things - we don’t. But 5-0 is the best motivation for our players. We want to play well at home. I think tomorrow will be a good match.

"We will do everything to win the game.

“We always play to win at home - we don’t want to lose. The team is feeling really stressed after last week. We need to try to do much better. We made mistakes in the first game but there were five shots and five goals. The team has prepared very well and we will make it a good game.”

It can’t be easy for any manager to front up after such an awful performance so credit goes to Stoilov for keeping his dignity and saying nice things about the team who humiliated his own six days ago.

Asked about Celtic and what they can achieve in the group stage, Stoilov said: “We will see have to see after tonight and the draw. If they managed to avoid some of the top sides then they are capable of getting through the group stage.

Ivan Mayewski, Astana’s Belarus midfielder and one of their better players, couldn’t hide that what happened in Glasgow has not been an easy thing to shrug off.

Astana would have hoped, and expected, that the tie would be alive after last year when a 92minute penalty from Moussa Dembele settled the tie at Parkhead. Instead, they are playing for pride and little else.

“The game in Glasgow was not so good for us,” said Mayewski with some understatement. “It was very unpredictable and, of course, it was a bad result. We will be doing everything we can to win this match.

“I can’t speak for the other players. There are opinions good and bad. If you listened to all of them you wouldn’t be able to prepare for the match properly. We are just concentrating on putting on a good performance.

“Everyone wants to win by more than five goals but we have to be realistic. First of all, we have to win the match to make the fans happy, because they always support us.

“Celtic are a really big club but they beat us so badly because of the mistakes we made. The game is in the past now so we have to concentrate on this one. We need to make sure we don’t go all-out attack in all positions because Celtic are very good at using the spaces on the counter and punishing teams.

“We have to stick to our own game and use the ball. It’s not just about the midfielders, the defenders or the attackers, we need all 11 players to play well.”