Celtic 'looking up the table' as they aim to finish in top-eight in Champions League

Callum McGregor says Celtic will travel to Birmingham next week looking for a victory that could propel them into a top-eight finish.

The Hoops secured Champions League knockout stage football with a 1-0 win over Young Boys on Wednesday night.

With a place in the play-offs guaranteed, they now have an outside chance of going straight through to the last-16 if they beat Aston Villa and other results go their way in the final round of league phase games.

Captain McGregor insists that while a bit of pressure may be off when they take on the English Premier League side, they are now looking up the table and aiming for the three-points.

Speaking after the win over the Swiss champions, he said: “It will be a brilliant game against a really good opponent, and a manager that has had a lot of success in European football, so it will be a brilliant learning curve for us as well.

“The pressure is off of us a little bit, but we are at our best when we go and attack the game and that’s what we will be doing.

“We are looking up the table and want to see how many points we can finish with.

“Getting into the top eight is now the objective in the next game, we want to win, we understand we are up against a top opponent and it will be a difficult game.

“But from what we’ve shown in the campaign so far, there’s nothing to say that we can’t go there and win.”

Celtic are currently in 18th place on 12 points, but only three points behind the likes of Atletico Madrid up in fifth, two points behind seventh-placed Atalanta and just one behind Leverkusen who currently occupy the last of the last-16 places in eighth.

Meanwhile, McGregor also said he hopes the club pull out all the stops to keep Kyogo Furuhashi amid claims the Japanese striker has played his last game for the Hoops.

Several reports in France claimed the Japan international was in line for a move to Rennes, soon after he helped Celtic clinch a Champions League play-off place.

McGregor said: “He’s a top player. Again, you see his quality, his movement, the way he sets the tone for the team.

“All our good players, we want to keep them for as long as we can and generally when there’s speculation, then people have done well so we want that as well.

“It gets people talking about Celtic and the players that we’ve got so I’m sure the club will do everything they can to keep him because he’s a top player and a top person as well.”