St Mirren lost 3-1 to Hearts at Tynecastle in midweek, which followed an impressive 2-0 victory over Rangers at Ibrox last weekend.

The previous meeting between Celtic and St Mirren in Paisley came back in August when Callum McGregor opened the scoring in the 3-0 win, while in the 3-0 win at Celtic Park, Nicolas Kuhn scored a double and Auston Trusty scored his first and, to date, only goal for Celtic.

Regardless of what has happened before, the Hoops captain knows the Paisley side will be tough opponents, and on a pitch which St Mirren manager Stephen Robinson hopes will be a leveler on the day, given its current poor quality.

“They’re in good form, they’ll be feeling good about themselves and they’ll try to start the game positively,” he said.

“So it’s just the same message for us – we approach every game the same way. Total respect to the opponent and then we try and pick them apart within the game and, ultimately, we’re there to win the game. Hopefully we do a lot right and we get the result that we want.

“You get to this point in the season, right through December, January and February, when the pitches aren’t great anyway, so it’s a challenge but we try and take all the excuses out of the game.

“We’re good, technical footballers so that’s the bit we pride ourselves on, and if the pitch is poor, then it’s a challenge for us and we want to show that we can still play on that type of surface so we’ve done it multiple times this season.

'If you think back to the Ross County game, there was still frost on the pitch at that point and we played ever so well.'

“Like I said, we don’t want to be using that as an excuse. Yes, it might play a little bit of a factor but our job is to find a way to win the game in all those circumstances.”

And following the announcement earlier today that away supporters will be at the two remaining Glasgow derbies this season, at Celtic Park on March 16 and Ibrox after the split, the Celtic captain said: “It’s a step forward from where we’ve been and it’ll add to the atmosphere, the game and everything else.

“Let’s hope that the experience is a good one and we can see where we can get to with that but, for sure, I think it’s always better when there are both sets of supporters in the stadium.”

More on the game

Callum McGregor: We aim to play our game and get the right result against St Mirren