Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink is ready for a fierce examination of Celtic’s title credentials tomorrow at Easter Road because he believes that a strong Clydesdale Bank Premier League will have a Champions League spin-off for Gordon Strachan’s players, who are eager to bounce back after losing to Shakhtar Donetsk in midweek.

The Dutch forward welcomes the new challenge not just from Rangers, but also from Dundee United - who could go joint-top of the table with Celtic if they win at Gretna today – and the rest of the Premier League because he feels it will lift Celtic’s performance levels for Europe.

Hibernian, currently in fourth place, defeated Celtic on their last trip to Easter Road last May and their Edinburgh rivals, Heart of Midlothian, wrecked Rangers’ unbeaten start to the Premier League by winning 4-2 at Tynecastle last weekend. However, Rangers recovered so well from that setback that they defeated VfB Stuttgart, the German champions, in the Champions League on Wednesday.

“For me, it’s just about winning the league and if someone makes it difficult, it brings out the best in you,” Vennegoor of Hesselink said. “Let’s hope that’s the thing for us. They [Rangers] are doing very well but for me it’s about winning and winning the league. It’s a task for us to become champions again but it’s a nice task to achieve goals. Let’s see what happens.

“If you play with good players around you, you play better yourself, it’s the same with the other teams in the league who are confronting you. You have to step up and I think it’s good for us. This should be a good game, Hibernian are a good footballing side as we are. In the final game of last season, we lost 2-1 there, so we know what to expect.

“However, we are top of the league and we want to stay there. I like to watch Hibernian play and I hope they play well on Sunday and we win. It’s a chance to take revenge very quickly. You live day by day in football. One day you lose, then the next day you are on top again. That’s football.

“After our last European game when we were away to St Mirren [after knocking out Spartak Moscow] and we put in a good performance. I hope to do it again against Hibernian. These matches are difficult because you give a lot during the European games, also with the travelling. The teams we play against know that and think, ‘We are going to get to them’. So, it’s important to win. There is a good spirit in the team although the result in Ukraine was not good. We are disappointed still. It was a bad start and after that we were chasing the game.”

Vennegoor of Hesselink, though, feels that his own striking partnership with Scott McDonald is gradually flourishing in the same vein as the one he had with Mateja Kezman at PSV Eindhoven, which earned the latter a move to Chelsea in 2004.

“I played with Kezman at PSV and he scored a lot of goals,” the Dutchman said. “I like to play with that kind of person.” Even though Vennegoor of Hesselink is the top Premier League marksman with five goals, Strachan stated that he felt the Dutch striker is only playing at 80 per cent of his capacity. “An extra 20 per cent? Of course, you always want to do better,” Vennegoor of Hesselink said.