After just one game at Celtic Park in a period of nigh on a month, the Celts are off on their travels again, with Germany being this week’s destination for the UEFA Champions League clash against RB Leipzig, the next game on the horizon.

The test comes hot on the heels of a demanding 2-1 win over Motherwell on Saturday, and regarding the two Celts who sat that out through injury, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Carl Starfelt, they are both at different levels of rehab.

Ange Postecoglou told Celtic TV: “After the weekend’s game everyone got through it really well from a physical standpoint, which is important, and were still waiting on Cameron to see how he is, and obviously Carl misses out, but aside from that, everyone seems to be in good shape physically.

“We’ll recover from the game, and prepare. This is pretty much going to be our routine between now and the break, so we know what we need to do.

'The recovery process is going to be important with all the football we have and how we give the players feedback on games and how we prepare them for games.'

“That means limited time out on the training field but we still want to maximise as much as we can the quality of our football there, but most of it will be just getting in to this routine of recovery, review and preparing for the next game.”

The Motherwell victory was game one of 13 to be played in three competitions before the next break on November 12 in what is almost a mini-season played inside six weeks, but for the manager, the mantra remains the same.

He said: “You still take one bite at a time rather than consuming the whole lot, so you still focus on it step by step.

“But we’ve known that for quite a while, so we’ve been preparing for it with the squad in the way we’ve been training so that come this period we know we’re going to have to rely on the bulk of the squad to get us through if we want to maintain performance levels.

‘But it’s still really about focusing on what’s next, that’s the most important thing – the next game, not looking too far ahead, making sure our training and our preparation is all about what’s the next challenge for us.’

“Particularly with the Champions League game, you can’t really look beyond that.”

Indeed, Celtic’s last home game before the Motherwell match was the Group F opener against the might of Real Madrid, and since then there has also been the away draw against Shakhtar Donetsk flung into the mix before Wednesday night’s face-off with Leipzig.

And it’s been a tournament and an experience the manager has been revelling in. He said: “It’s been good, I would enjoy it more if we’d won, obviously because you want to win games of football.

“But it’s just great to be performing at that level again and it’s where the club needs to be, wants to be and now the challenge for us is to grow every time we’re out there.

“I guess for the players, that initial excitement in the first game, the buzz of being in the Champions League, particularly here at home playing against Real Madrid was fantastic, but now we’ve done that it’s about 'let’s make an impact at that level'.

“So it doesn’t mean the challenge is getting any easier, because Leipzig away is a pretty tough challenge, but, as I said now, it’s about really wanting us to be present at that stage, to be competitive at that stage and growing every time we’re out there.”

And he is expecting a tough challenge from the Bundesliga outfit. The manager added: “They had a little bit of a disrupted start to the season.

“But the change of manager seems to have sparked them a little bit. All the traditional trademarks of their football are there, they’ve got a lot of speed, very dynamic and in terms of transition football they’re quick.

“When you’re playing away in the Champions League there’s always a massive challenge to overcome those hurdles. But I think it will be a good game for us to measure our football, measure ourselves and we’ll be ready for it.”

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Ange Postecoglou: We want to grow with the Champions League challenge