{"id":577365,"date":"2026-07-31T15:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T15:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/577365\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T15:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T15:47:08","slug":"celtic-reject-engels-bid-and-confirm-johnston-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/577365\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtic reject Engels bid and confirm Johnston interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celtic have rejected a West Ham approach for Arne Engels while Everton are keen on Alistair Johnston, manager Martin O’Neill has confirmed.<\/p>\n

The West Ham bid for Belgium midfielder Engels, 22, “doesn’t remotely meet our valuation”, said O’Neill, who received a call from Everton counterpart David Moyes relating to Canada full-back Johnston, 27.<\/p>\n

“Everton have been in contact,” explained O’Neill. “I’m not sure whether there’s been a bid in there for that one, but they’ve been in contact saying that there would be.<\/p>\n

“In fairness, David Moyes did call me last week to say there would be contact.”<\/p>\n

Nottingham Forest failed with a February offer worth \u00a325m<\/a> for Engels, who moved to Celtic Park from Augsburg in August 2024.<\/p>\n

Johnston, who started all five of Canada’s games at the World Cup, joined the Scottish champions from Montreal in January 2023.<\/p>\n

O’Neill described the interest in both players as “disappointing” but “to be expected”, adding that it is “difficult to stop people if their ambition is to play in a big, big league”.<\/p>\n

The 74-year-old went on to say: “Our job is to try and keep them, try and do our best to keep them. <\/p>\n

“If that’s not possible, naturally we’ll have to try and get replacements in. To replace those players would be a difficult task.”<\/p>\n

Celtic have sold Daizen Maeda to Ipswich Town and brought in forward duo Kasper Hogh and Camilo Duran this summer.<\/p>\n

“I felt that something would happen with some of our top players,” O’Neill said.<\/p>\n

“I was hoping as each day goes past that there wouldn’t be any serious interest. But that was never going to happen.<\/p>\n

“But we need players in anyway. And we’re in the hunt for that. We’re getting close. I don’t know how close is close, but we are definitely getting close.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celtic have rejected a West Ham approach for Arne Engels while Everton are keen on Alistair Johnston, manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-577365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}