Strachan is adamant it is moments of "magic" which often separates sides in European football's premier club competition.

The Hoops boss will look to Shunsuke Nakamura, Shaun Maloney and Aiden McGeady to make the same sort of impact that Barcelona's Lionell Messi did when he starred in the Catalan side's victory at Celtic Park in the last-16 stage last season, scoring twice in the 3-2 win in Glasgow.

Strachan, who refused to be drawn on the possibility of persuading Nakamura to make a u-turn on the Japan international's reported desire to leave Celtic in January , said: "Take away persuading him (Nakamura) to stay because that's a different conversation for a different time.

"But Nakamura, McGeady, Maloney and people like that have proved that we need these kind of players to be big and perform one or two individual pieces of magic on European nights, because most European ties are decided by magical pieces of football from top players.

"The best players in the world play in this competition, so normally good players decide games.

"If you look at Barcelona last season, Lionel Messi decided what the the tie was going to be, he decided he was going to score goals and beat people at will.

"So hopefully, again, good players will decide the games and hopefully our good players will play well."

Strachan played down the fact that his side are strong favourites to beat the Danes who are struggling in their domestic league having lost 2-0 at home to AGF Arhus at the weekend.

The former Coventry and Southampton boss referred back to last season's group stages when Celtic were lucky to escape from their trip to play fourth seeds Shakhtar Donetsk with only a 2-0 defeat, before struggling to beat the Ukraine side 2-1 at Parkhead.

"We had the fourth seeds in Shakhtar Donetsk last season and everyone saw how good they were," the Celtic boss said.

"Aalborg will think that because they are playing against the third seeds in us, that it's probably their best chance of getting an away win.

"So I'm sure both sides will be positive and try to get a victory."

Strachan added: "We have seen a lot of good things from Aalborg even though they are not top of the league at the moment.

"They finished the second half well at the weekend and I know a cup competition is completely different from the league, it is a great leveller.

"They are a bit different from the Danish side we played two seasons ago, FC Copenhagen.

"They were physically bigger than Aalborg but Aalborg move the ball about a bit quicker.

"So they are two different styles but this will be hard, like it was against Copenhagen."