SCOTT Brown has played more European games for Celtic than any other player, but for the Hoops captain, the next one is always the most important.

That game will take place at the Friends Arena in Stockholm on Thursday, with Neil Lennon’s side taking a 2-0 lead into the second leg of their UEFA Europa League play-off against AIK and looking to complete the job to book a place in the group stages of the competition.

And while the Celtic skipper is anticipating a tough match, he also knows that the Hoops are capable of netting a vital away goal that would make AIK’s task even harder.

Speaking in the Friends Arena ahead of the Euro tie, Scott Brown said: “It’s good to have a 2-0 advantage but we need to try and score a goal which would put them under pressure.

“They did well at Celtic Park and they defended well but they’re going to have to attack and try and put us under pressure. They’ve got to score goals but we’ve got the pace and the quality to catch teams on the counter-attack as well.

“Our forward players have been on fire recently with the amount of goals that we’ve been scoring, so we’re looking for a little bit more of that as well.

“For us, it’s about our mindset and how we go into this game because away games in Europe are always hard as you’ve got the crowd against you. So it’s about us getting a touch of the ball, playing our game, and then try to dictate play, keep hold of the ball and not panic.”

There is no temptation, either, to try and simply defend the two-goal advantage. It’s not in the nature of a Celtic team to play for anything other than a win, and Brown knows that it’s important for the Scottish champions to try and impose themselves on the contest.

“We’ll approach it the way we do every game – we’ll try to win it, whether it’s home or away,” he said. “You don’t want to come over here and maybe get a 1-0 defeat, and just go through that way. We want to play positively, get the ball down, play our game and our style as well. That’s what we’ve done in the last couple of weeks.

“We went into the first game and showed how well we can press as a team, how much we can put them under pressure, especially high up the park and try to force mistakes. More often than not, we kept the ball in their half, created a lot of chances and we were unlucky not to score more goals on the night.”

Celtic’s two goals against the Swedish champions came courtesy of James Forrest and Odsonne Edouard, and both of those players are capable of adding to their goals tally in Stockholm. There are goals throughout the team, and the Hoops took their Premiership tally to 15 in three games with the 3-1 win over Hearts at the weekend.

“It was a great performance throughout the team against Hearts,” said Brown. “Bayo was unlucky not to get the goals but he was in the right place at the right time, and he was causing problems, so it’s great that we’ve got that strength in the squad that we can chop and change.”

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Scott Brown: We want to impose our game on AIK