Captain Callum McGregor says the hard-fought draw at Red Star Belgrade in Celtic’s Europa League opener provides “belief again” as they strive for further improvement.

Following the disappointment of their Champions League play-off defeat to Kairat Almaty last month, Brendan Rodgers’ kicked off their Europa campaign with a point as Kelechi Iheanacho’s opener in Serbia was cancelled out by Marko Arnautovic.

Celtic host Hibs in the Premiership on Saturday before welcoming Braga to Parkhead for the next European test next Thursday.

“It’s not a bad result when you think about the circumstances of coming to Belgrade and being away from home in the first game,” midfielder McGregor said.

“Hopefully that gives us a good platform moving forward and gives the team belief again that we can come to a place like this and control the game and come away with a point.

“It’s always important to get points as early as you can. Coming here as a relatively new team, it was a good template of how we want to work. We’ll get better as the games go but I think as a starting point it was pretty good.

“Hopefully we’ll grow in belief and get better as the games go on. We’ve got eight games to qualify for the next round and that’s where we want to be.”