Brendan Rodgers said he was delighted with his side's qualifying campaign after seeing them complete an 8-4 aggregate win over Astana to reach the Champions League group stage.

Celtic lost 4-3 on the night but achieved their early season goal with plenty to spare and now go into Thursday's draw with the biggest names in football.

Rodgers reflected on the defeat but said that the bigger picture was far more pleasing as he had dealt with injury to take his side through four stages of qualification.

"I assess overall," he said. "Over the course of two games against Astana we scored eight goals .

"Yeah, we were disappointing tonight but across the campaign I've had to play midfield players at centre-half, right-backs at centre-half, put kids in, play games without strikers so all in all the players have been absolutely first class, deserved to qualify and we'll look forward now to the draw."

Despite that, the Celtic boss admitted he was a little unhappy with the performance in the second leg defeat but said his players showed character to bounce back after an Astana onslaught in the second half.

"It's mixed emotions because we didn't defend well enough and our possession at times wasn't good enough either," he said.

"I said to the players (at half-time) we started the game very well. We wanted to control the tempo but we were too loose in our passing and our positioning, we weren't compact enough when they had the ball. That didn't allow us to press.

"I thought we were going to get through this campaign without the anxiety but that little period (at the start of the second half) they scored two quick goals. We were working on the side to plug gaps.

"I then have to give credit to the players because they were on the ropes for 15-20 minutes, but they regained their composure."