Celtic manager Neil Lennon has laid an ambitious plan of getting the club into the second place of the group in the Champions league. Celtic have been drawn along with some of the biggest names in world football like Barcelona and Milan for the Champions league group stages for this season.

Ajax are the other team in the group and between these three teams, there is more than 15 Champions league titles. This means that Celtic are the underdogs going into the campaign and they lived up to the billing by suffering a 2-0 defeat in the opening match of the season against AC Milan.

Celtic looked like they would come back with a 0-0 draw for most of the match because they were able to keep out a struggling Milan team out. However, two goals in the last 10 minutes of the match changed the outcome for Celtic. Despite this defeat, there were several positives to take according to Lennon, who was also delighted to see Ajax suffer a 4-0 defeat against Barcelona. Celtic managed to make it into the last 16 stage of the competition last season. This was viewed as a great achievement by the Scottish club, who have inferior resources in comparison with the other competitors.

"If Barcelona run away with it, then it's a three-way fight for second place. "This question 'do you lack a 'Champions League goalscorer', what are you gauging it against. What are you comparing it to? We've lacked a Champions League goal scorer since I took over. We haven't had that since Henrik Larsson. They cost a lot of money and they're hard to find," said Lennon after the opening match. Lennon was also happy with the contribution from his striker Anthony Stokes, who made his debut in the competition against AC Milan.