BRENDAN RODGERS admitted he knew nothing of the newly introduced Europa Conference League this week as Leicester dropped into the third tier competition.

Celtic midfielder David Turnbull wasn’t for offering a tutorial, however if there is the opportunity of making a mark in some kind of Continental joust then the 22-year-old is keen to make an impression. 

It is not quite where Celtic’s ambitions would take them and in another season or another group their 9 points from the Europa League campaign would have prolonged their stay. As it is they will parachute into the new competition with Turnbull harbouring quiet ambitions around Celtic’s participation. 

Asked if Celtic should have designs on winning it, he said: "Why not? Every game we treat the same. Once we get the draw and find out who we get it will be about beating them first. We will try and get ourselves on a run and I'm sure we will be all focused on it. We will try to do our best and get as far as we can.

"I'm looking forward to it. We can't focus on winning trophies in competitions which haven't started yet. It's still at the knock-out stages so we will focus on one game at a time. I just know it's a new tournament which has just been brought in this season. Big teams which don't do their best or qualify for the latter stages of the Europa League drop into it. I'm not too sure entirely about it.

"Every team in it will be of a really high quality, you never get an easy game in Europe so I'm sure it will be a good experience.” 

The real priority for Celtic is the league and not only because it looks as though it will open the door to automatic Champions League entry next season.

The Parkhead side are at Fir Park this afternoon as Turnbull goes up against the club where he came through the ranks and took the first steps in his professional career. Celtic’s problems at times this season have been in breaking teams down when they are camped in with both Jota and Kyogo Furihashi instrumental in finding a way through. 

The on-loan Benfica winger is definitely out while it looks highly unlikely that Kyogo will play after he headed out of Thursday night’s game clutching his hamstring. The onus will be on some of the fringe players who impressed in the win over Real Betis to do the same against the Fir Park side.

“I still speak to people at Motherwell and I'll be forever grateful for what they've done for me,” said Turnbull.  

"It's all about keeping the run going. It's been going great over the last few games and we kept that going against Betis on Thursday night. We aim to win each game, taking them one by one. We want to continue that run and win as many games as we can. It's obvious we don't want injuries but we spoke about it on Thursday night. It's about boys stepping into these positions.

"They can do just as well and work hard for the team. I don't think we need to worry too much. Thursday night was a game where we also showed the strength in depth we have.

"We had a batch of boys coming in and they all played brilliantly to a man. They showed everyone what they can do.

"That's what the boys who haven't been playing need to do. Everybody is going to be needed, everyone knows the schedule we have coming up is quite busy as we go into the Christmas period. I'm sure we will need everybody, whenever that will be, if somebody gets injured or late in games and we need something to change. I am sure all of the boys will be ready.