OF the new signings that have been brought into Celtic during the summer who have had any significant game-time, it is perhaps Carl Starfelt who will feel that he still has the most to prove. But the Swedish international is certain that he can overcome a rather sticky start and win over the Celtic supporters.

It didn’t help Starfelt’s cause when he scored a freak own goal against AZ Alkmaar in the Europa League qualifier, with the defender relieved his slip-up didn’t ultimately cost his side a place in the group stages of the competition.

He rallied during that match in The Netherlands to produce a battling second half display to help Celtic over the line, and he believes that the best is certainly yet to come from him in a Celtic jersey.

“I feel like I have more to give,” Starfelt said. “I feel like it’s getting better.

“I feel more secure for every game. I just need to keep working hard and hopefully I will only grow.

“Of course I know, I have played football for a long time and I know you will have difficult moments. But then every player will have difficult moments.

“You’ve got to just push through them mentally and if you keep working hard it will turn around and that’s what I’m trying to do.

“I try to work hard every day and keep my confidence up and that’s what my focus is on.”

What hasn’t helped Starfelt is that he has yet to play in a settled partnership, with Cameron Carter-Vickers the latest to slot in alongside him at the heart of the Celtic defence. While he rates all of his partners such as Carter-Vickers, Stephen Welsh and Nir Bitton, he concedes that a more regular arrangement may help improve his own consistency.

“Of course it’s optimum to have played with your centre-back partner before,” he said.

“Cam came in for the game against Ross County and did a very good job. It felt like it was easy to play with him. I felt that with the others too though.

“When you change a lot of players it becomes difficult but when one or two come in it’s easier to adapt when you have a strong core.

“Everyone who has played there has done very well and they’ve been easy to play with. But of course the more you play with someone the more you get to know them and the more you can adapt to each other.

“So it will get better also.”

It is anyone’s guess who Ange Postecoglou will opt to throw in for the first of those Europa League group games this week as Celtic head to Seville to play Real Betis on Thursday night.

The significance of the city was not immediately apparent to Starfelt, with nobody filling him in yet about the UEFA Cup Final of 2003, but the significance of the fixture certainly is.

“No, I haven’t talked too much about that actually but now you’ve told me I will look into it some more!” he said.

“None of the players have mentioned this yet because all of the focus was on the Ross County game. Maybe I will hear something soon.

“It’s a very big game there. There are tough games in a tough group.

“But they will also be fun games so we’ll go and play our football and see where it takes us.

It will be my first time playing in Seville.

“I feel like we have a very clear way of playing and the coach is very clear in how he wants us to play.

So everyone knows what we want to do. We will go and perform our best and see how far it will take us.

“We know it’s going to be very tough but we also believe in ourselves so we will see.

“It’s important how we want to play this game, what we want to do on the pitch.

“It’s the first game in the group, it’s obviously a very tough game so we will go and try to win and play our football and see where it takes us.”