Motherwell defender Tom Aldred has said that the Scottish Premiership represents a different sort of challenge to the English leagues.

Aldred joined the Steelmen on loan from Bury in January and has previous top flight experience in Scotland from a brief loan at Inverness Caley Thistle in 2011.

The Lanarkshire side are preparing to face champions Celtic at the weekend and the ex-Blackpool captain says Brendan Rodgers men represent English Premier League quality, though some teams are League 2 level.

He said: "There's a massive variation in quality up here, obviously I'm still yet to play against some of the top teams but there's a massive variation in quality.

"Depending on what league you're in down south you sort of know what you're going to get.

"Whereas here you can play against teams or players that would maybe represent League 1 or 2 players then you're probably going to come up against players on Sunday that represent Premier League players and international players.

"It's good because you don't know what you're coming up against all different types of players.

"Coming up here has helped me a lot, not just playing against different types of players, different teams and stadiums."

The 27-year old has spent the bulk of his career amongst England's lower leagues and says players down south watch a lot of the Scottish games with Celtic very highly regarded.

He said: "Down south in England every player would be lying if they said they didn't watch Celtic because they're one of the best teams in Europe.

"As a club they're as big as anyone.

"They're always on the TV on a Sunday so I watch them all the time.

"Lads all the time watch the games, there's a lot of them on the TV, so yeah everyone's interested to watch what it's like up here and fortunately I've been able to come up here and play."

Aldred has never faced Celtic before but is aware of his new side's previous encounters with them; In November, a late Scott Sinclair penalty denied Motherwell a victory over Celtic in the league and they competed well in their League Cup final defeat.

He added: "You want to test yourself against the best teams and the best players so when you get the opportunity to come up and play against teams like Celtic, they're the ones you want to test yourself.

"When you see that they've nearly beat them and they've competed with them in the Cup Final as well it gives more evidence that you can compete with them and get a result against them."