Celtic will be without Scott Brown and Shaun Maloney for their crucial Europa League match away to Hamburg tomorrow night.

Maloney has tendonitis in his Achilles and Brown, his fellow midfield player, has an ankle injury. Adding to the Scottish side's problems, Artur Boruc, the goalkeeper, is still recovering from a minor knee operation so Lukasz Zaluska will continue in goal.

Tony Mowbray, the Celtic manager, could start Marc-Antoine Fortune, the forward who has recovered from a knee injury, but made his comeback only on Saturday after being out since August.

"Am I tempted to play him? Yes," Mowbray said. "The more high-quality players on the pitch, the better it is but we have some strikers who will be bursting to score tomorrow night."

With Celtic five points from the qualification places and bottom of group C on one point, Mark Venus, the Celtic assistant manager, could not hide the importance of a victory. "If we don’t win, it’s going to be very difficult for us to progress,” he said.

Mowbray, however, refused to place too much importance on getting three points. "I wouldn’t talk about win-or-bust games," he said. "It’s a game where we have to be conscious of the quality of the opposition, of course. But we will try to win as we try to win every football match. We will be as positive as we can and try and get a positive result and see where we go from there.”

Paddy McCourt is expected to replace Maloney in the Celtic squad, according to Venus. "With Shaun out, we’re a winger down, so I would imagine [McCourt] will be in among the 18-man list for the game,” he said.

Hamburg won 1-0 last month at Celtic Park, where the home side are usually so difficult to beat in Europe, but Venus saw positives in that match. "Looking at the game against them in Glasgow, we deserved to score, so I don’t think it’s an impossible task to go there and win the game.”