THE praise heaped upon Celtic whenever they face top class English or European opposition at Parkhead invariably verges on the condescending.

The lines peddled by visiting players and managers rarely deviate from a familiar script irrespective of how the game panned out and what the final scoreline was.

Generally speaking, it goes as follows; the support is lauded, the atmosphere they generate marvelled at, the history of the club acclaimed, the play of the home team complimented and a bright future predicted.

There was certainly an all-out charm offensive by Leicester City on Saturday evening after the reigning English champions had triumphed in their opening match in the International Champions Cup on penalties.

“Celtic are a good team, they had a lot of the ball and they showed their quality, they have quality players,” said Demarai Gray. “Obviously they have a good manager in Brendan Rodgers, so I think they can have a successful year.”

Christian Fuchs offered this. "Celtic attacked well and they defended well,” he said. “It would be nice to come back and play against Celtic in Glasgow this season. Celtic Park on a Champions League night? Everybody knows it and everybody wants to experience it. It's Celtic. What else can you say?”

Quite. Yet, on this occasion, there was a great deal of truth in the comments from Claudio Ranieri and his players. Rodgers could certainly take a great many positives out of the glorified pre-season friendly match into the most important week of his short tenure as manager so far even though his team was defeated.

Leicester may, with striker Jamie Vardy resting following his exertions with England at the Euro 2016 finals in France this summer and N’Golo Kante having moved on to Chelsea, not have been quite the force they were in the Barclays Premier League last season.

Still, they were significantly better than the clubs Celtic hosted in the Ladbrokes Premiership or, for that matter, the Europa League last season. That much was obvious when Riyad Mahrez, the Algerian international winger and PFA Players’ Player of the Year, opened the scoring for Leicester early in the second half. There will be few better goals netted at Celtic Park in the coming months than his breathtaking strike.

However, the Scottish champions did well just to concede one goal – particularly with first choice centre half Erik Sviatchenko, left back Kieran Tierney and central midfielder Nir Bitton all being rested ahead of the first leg of the Champions League third qualifying round tie against Astana in Kazakhstan on Wednesday evening.

Rodgers fielded an unfamiliar three man back line with Emilio Izaguirre and Saidy Janko on either side of Mikael Lustig and Scott Brown sitting deep just in front of them. At times, their unfamiliarity with the new system showed a little, but the experiment could be considered a success.

They also created far more chances than Leicester. Moussa Dembele, who enjoyed perhaps his most impressive outing for Celtic since signing last month despite failing to get on the scoresheet, and Leigh Griffiths both brought fine saves from Ron-Robert Zieler in the first half.

When Eoghan O’Connell equalised on the hour mark with his first goal for Celtic – the 20-year-old defender did brilliantly to curl a low shot beyond Kasper Schmeichel, who had replaced Zieler at half-time, and in off the inside of the right post – nobody in the stadium could argue that it was undeserved.

Even the shoot-out was, despite the final outcome, cause for encouragement. Nadir Ciftci, Stefan Johansen, Scott Allan, O’Connell and Ryan Christie all buried their spot kicks confidently. Even James Forrest had his effort brilliantly denied by Schmeichel.

Rodgers was also able to give 19 players some game time. The run out that Stefan Johansen, the Norwegian midfielder who missed the games against Lincoln Red Imps in the last round of the Champions League due to injury, enjoyed should bring him into contention for the game against Astana.

Playing Astana this week will be a huge step up from the Red Imps, a predominantly part-time side from Gibraltar, for Celtic. The encounter with Leicester, then, was an invaluable exercise. Rodgers can take confidence from how his charges acquitted themselves against rivals who will play in the group stages of Europe’s premier club competition for the first time this season.

Having Kolo Toure, the vastly experienced Ivory Coast internationalist who completed his move to Scotland yesterday, in the starting line-up in Kazakhstan would certainly have increased Celtic’s chances of getting a result. But his absence should be far from disastrous on the evidence of the weekend.

"We know it’s going to be a tough game on Wednesday night, but our preparation is going really well,” said Rodgers. “We are improving every day, with our fitness levels and our football ideas, but we need to get better with the ball, that’s for sure. But that’s improving and I’m happy.

“We want to be a team on the front foot, but if you go behind in the game you need that belief that you can keep coming back. It was a real good test for us because you can see at this early stage that Leicester's players have come back at a good level of fitness. It was a good test for us and the players did really well.

“It’s still very early and we are still working to improve our fitness and ideas. We still want some more players to come in and help the team but I can’t ask any more of the players. Their comfort with the ball needs to be better, it wasn’t perfect, but I don’t expect it to be at this stage of pre-season.”