Cameron Carter-Vickers spoke to the media, including The Celtic Star yesterday afternoon ahead of tonight’s crucial Champions League match against Club Brugge at Paradise…

The colossal central defender has missed a number of key Champions League matches throughout his Celtic career but is looking forward to playing his role in tonight’s mammoth Champions League encounter with the Belgian champions Club Brugge.

Alongside fellow United States international Auston Trusty, Carter-Vickers has created a new formidable partnership that has looked strong both on the domestic scene and on the continent.

The duo were defensively robust against RB Leipzig in Celtic’s 3-1 victory over the Bundesliga outfit three weeks ago. A similar performance is required in order to gain the same outcome as the one versus Marco Rose’s side. The Hoops must be durable, and it starts from Carter-Vickers and co at the back.

Following the convincing win at Tynecastle, Brendan Rodgers’ side are now nine games unbeaten across all competitions since their humiliating 7-1 defeat against Dortmund at the Westfalenstadion in early October.

Undoubtedly, the defensive showing in Atalanta against the current Europa League titleholders has given Celtic the belief that they firmly belong in Europe’s elite club competition.

A win tonight against Brugge would secure at least a knockout playoff tie in February. Three points this evening and top eight [direct entry to the last 16]becomes a realistic target.

With that in sight, Carter-Vickers was unequivocal of his analysis of Celtic’s Champions League campaign so far.

“To be honest, around the beginning of the competition we kind of outlined how many points we wanted to reach,” he told the media conference yesterday at Celtic Park.

“Since then, we’ve just been taking it game by game. I think we’re in a strong position at the moment so it’s just about adding to that points tally and seeing how many points we can achieve.”

CCV explained, “we feel as a group we’re probably pretty close to getting out of this group phase of the tournament”

“Like I said, there’s four games left and we want to get positive results in all of them, so it’s just us against ourselves now to see how many points we can get.”

Watch Cameron Carter-Vickers media conference below…