Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has said that he would take personal pride in leading the club back into the Champions League proper.

Rodgers and his players are in Israel for the second leg of their play-off tie against Hapoel Be'er Sheva holding a 5-2 lead from the first leg. Aiming to complete the job and go into Thursday's draw with Europe's elite, the manager said it would be a big achievement to steer them through at the first time of asking.

"To lead Celtic into the Champions League would be a huge honour and a great privilege," he said.

"The managers before me that I spoke to said the first qualifying campaign was very difficult for them.

"For us, we've put in an awful lot of work. We've got two hands on the prize, and a tight grip as well.

"We just need to ensure that we maintain that grip."

Celtic were defeated by Malmo and Maribor at the play-off stage in the past two seasons but hold a healthy lead over Hapoel following a thrilling match in Glasgow last week. A goal from Tom Rogic and a double from Leigh Griffiths put the hosts 3-0 ahead by half time but, after Hapoel pulled the score back to 3-2, Moussa Dembele and Scott Brown restored the significant lead.

Hapoel manager Barak Bakhar has said it would take a miracle for his side to qualify and an early Celtic goal would make that task even harder. Rodgers said he was impressed by how his players were starting games strongly and said it put them in good stead for the challenges ahead

"If you analyse and look at a lot of our games I think that's been the very pleasing factor, that we've been scoring early goals.," he said. "I said when I first came in that the hallmark of the team would be hopefully starting games very quickly and scoring goals.

"But we've also scored late goals as well. If you think of the games where we've scored late in the first half, late in the second half, that shows that this is a team that is not perfect by any means but has certainly got a resilience in it and a mentality to keep going.

"Whatever comes up in games, to have that ability to keep pushing. That's been very, very pleasing and it's something that the players have worked very hard to have as part of their makeup.

"If you want to be a really good side, that's something that you need to have."