HAVING enjoyed European football after Christmas for the past two seasons, Scott Brown and his team-mates are determined to do everything they can to try and achieve that again this time around. The next step in that quest is to see off Swedish side, AIK, and book their place in the group stages of the UEFA Europa League.

Celtic go into the second leg of their play-off holding a 2-0 lead, and while they’re anticipating a tough contest in Stockholm’s Friends Arena, Neil Lennon’s side are confident of finishing the job and going into Friday’s group-stage draw.

Speaking ahead of tonight’s game, Scott Brown said: “It’s a huge week, but every game for Celtic is huge. We just look forward to them. We just want to win the next two games and that’s our mindset.

“We had European football after Christmas last year, and that’s the aim again for this season, so hopefully we can get through to the group stages and take it from there.”

Celtic dominated the first leg of their play-off tie against AIK, and were unlucky not to add to their goals tally, which came courtesy of strikes from James Forrest and Odsonne Edouard.

The Hoops skipper is anticipating a more attack-minded AIK side tonight (Thursday), given that they need to get among the goals to have any hopes of European progress themselves.

“AIK played well together as a team, tried to defend deep, and now and then played quite direct<” he said. “For us, it was about how we dictated play, how we controlled the game, how we squeezed the game, and our wide men worked extremely hard to do that. They set the tempo for us early on, they caused the problems and we were able to back it up.

“It’ll be different tonight. They’ll come a bit more attacking because they know they have to score some goals to try and get through.

“We’ll play our game and we’ll also got the pace to catch them on the counter-attack. We’ve got the pace to hurt teams, we’ve got flare and we’ve got the players to score goals, so we’re in a good place at the moment.”

Tune in to Celtic TV for more European action v AIK

Captain: We're aiming to take the next step in our Euro journey