Erik Sviatchenko reckons Celtic can draw confidence from their domestic dominance and be brave enough to take the game to English Premier League leaders Manchester City in this week’s Battle of Britain.

City have started their domestic season even more impressively than the Scottish champions, with a magnificent seven successive wins, while three Champions League victories make it the perfect 10.

However in spite of the chastening experience of their seven goal drubbing in Barcelona after having beaten Glasgow rivals Rangers 5-1 three days earlier, the big defender insisted that Celtic have to show even more of the sort of belief that saw them recover from going behind to Kilmarnock to thrash their latest visitors 6-1.

"We will take our chances when we have the ball,” he said after watching his colleagues do just that with goals from Moussa Dembele (2), James Forrest, Leigh Griffiths, Scott Sinclair - with a penalty that meant he had scored in the team's first six league matches to overtake a club record set 84 years by Jimmy McGrory - and Tom Rogic.

“You also defend when you have the ball. If you give the ball away a lot it will be a long night,

"We will do everything we can to keep the same movement we saw today. If we move the ball quickly it doesn't matter who we are against.

“But it's also about courage.”

The Swede believes he and his colleagues will be readier to meet Pep Guardiola’s side than they were to meet the team that he played such a major part in building.

"I think we just accept the (Barcelona) game and we move forward,” he said of that Nou Camp experience.

“We talked about the game, we looked at some clips and at where we can improve.

"Sometimes we have to remember that we only had one day of preparation for the big game. When you are facing the best players in the world and you only have one day it will be difficult.

"But we will be concentrated and we will have home advantage and hopefully the crowd can help us through what will be a difficult game.”

They also have to deal with the vast contrast between playing against Scottish opposition, when they can have a near monopoly of possession as against Killie and taking on Europe’s giants where it can be close to the opposite.

"That's the beauty of playing in the Champions League,” said Sviatchenko.

“We want to be the best in Scotland but we also want to be good in Europe. That is our target, to keep improving.

“A game like this is all about concentration. We have the fitness, we have the players and the skills, we just need to concentrate 150 per cent.”

On the face of it, then, Saturday’s free-scoring performance which saw them do as they liked in scoring six goals in 50 minutes after going behind to Souleymane Coulibaly’s 32nd minute wonder strike, was far from ideal preparation, but Sviatchenko claimed otherwise.

"It was the perfect warm-up for Wednesday,” he reckoned.

“It's always good to have a good win going into the Champions League.

“We didn't use all our energy today. We were clever and after we lost a really, really good goal we came back to show we are the better team.”