Celtic’s James Forrest excited to be playing in the Champions League again

James Forrest expects the standard of Champions League opponent to be “really high” again this season but he is excited about Celtic’s return to European football’s premier club competition.

The Hoops’ cinch Premiership title win last season and Scottish football’s improved co-efficient mean Ange Postecoglou’s side enter at the group stage in September.

Celtic will play in the tournament for the first time since 2017-2018 when they were beaten 5-0 at home by Paris St Germain – their heaviest ever home European defeat – before a 7-1 defeat in Paris, while also losing home and away to Bayern Munich.

Celtic won one match in the section and the 3-0 victory against Anderlecht in Belgium was enough to take them into the last 32 of the Europa League where they were knocked out by Zenit St Petersburg.

Forrest, who signed a new three-year-deal the day after the title was clinched last season, is as enthusiastic as ever about Champions League football.

The 31-year-old winger said: “If you ask any players who played in the games, obviously, it is not nice sometimes when you have had big deficits in results.

“But everyone wants to challenge themselves and play in those games and the fans want to see those teams and us playing against them.

“Everyone will be looking forward to it. Every home game is really good and the fans will look forward to travelling to the away games.

“Whoever we get, everyone will be buzzing.

“Even when we have played in the Europa League in the last couple of years the standard was high, and even when we were in the Europa Conference League last season, you had a lot of good teams that you might not have heard of who have a lot of good players as well.

“The standard in Europe is going to be really high but