Anderlecht haven't given up, warns Celtic's Dedryck Boyata

Dedryck Boyata believes tomorrow's clash with Anderlecht will be a tight game. Picture: SNS.

In hailing from Brussels where the Belgian champions are based, the 27-year-old Celtic defender has been given a real insight into the mindset Anderlecht will take into their Glasgow visit.

Conversations with journalists in his homeland about a Champions League tie they have described as “shoot-out” has alerted him to the fact there is no sense of a lost cause – even if the Belgian club require a three-goal win to overturn the 3-0 victory by Rodgers’ men in the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium that puts them in the box seat to secure European football in the new year.

“They definitely haven’t given up on it,” Boyata said. “They’ve said that if we can win 3-0 over there then they can do the same here. Since they got their new manager [Hein Vanhaezebrouck] they’ve been doing better than they were when we played them the first time. It will be a difficult game for us but I refuse to think about us losing to them. That would ruin Christmas – in fact, it would ruin everything.” Anderlecht are not the side Celtic faced nine weeks ago. Although they were eliminated from the cup by Standard Liege in midweek, they have won five and drawn one of the past six league games. On Saturday, on-loan Everton forward Henry Onyekuru, with whom Celtic were linked a year ago, scored as they beat Lokeren 2-1 to move into third place and within six points of leaders Brugge in the Belgian league.

“They are the equivalent to us back home but they had a very bad start to the season, particularly when you look at how well they did last year [in reaching the quarter-finals of the Europa League],” Boyata said. “Because they began so poorly they found themselves under pressure. They’re third in the league but it’s always hard to play when you are under pressure and the expectations from their fans are really high.

“They are a big club, though, so they should be used to that. We are a big club, too, but we’re unbeaten domestically for 67 games now and things are getting better for us. We’ve worked hard for that because it’s not easy to keep it up week after week. Anderlecht, though, have had lots of criticism but I’m sure they’ll have found their feet by the time we play them.”

A return to the Champions League arena provides Celtic with the opportunity to demonstrate they are better than they showed in the recent 7-1 whipping by a Paris Saint-Germain side that this weekend suffered their first defeat of the season when they lost to Strasbourg, who are currently sitting 16th in the 20-team French top flight.

“You learn from these mistakes in these sort of games because you’re coming up against very good players. But you don’t sleep well after a defeat like that. It’s vital now that we bounce back from that in this tie.

“I won’t say how we’re going to play against Anderlecht. We know the manager always makes the right decisions tactically. He’s sent members of staff to go and watch them so we’ll know what we have to do on the night.

“It could help us that they need to come and attack. We don’t get much of that in the Premiership but the Champions League is different because the teams are quicker and sharper. So this game could be very open because they have to win and they have to score goals.”