O’Neill confirms he is “very interested” in signing former Arsenal and England midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and has held talks with the 32-year-old, who has been without a club since leaving Besiktas last summer.<\/p>\n
However, O’Neill says Oxlade-Chamberlain, who has been training with Arsenal, has “lots of options, some closer to London too” and the Celtic boss is “surprised teams haven’t already teed him up”.<\/p>\n
Celtic are not currently speaking to any other out-of-contract players.<\/p>\n
Having signed three players on deadline day, O’Neill is “happy” with Celtic’s business, adding: “It’s nice to get a few people in, in different positions. I think they can help in the manner in which I think the two new arrivals who have played some games for us have done really fine.”<\/p>\n
O’Neill is “delighted” the board made a “major statement” by turning down bids rising to \u00a325m from Nottingham Forest for Arne Engels: “It’s really tempting. And it’s come at a very, very late stage from that viewpoint. So real, great credit to them.”<\/p>\n
Asked if the board spoke to him about the Engels offer, the Northern Irishman says: “No, absolutely not. Not at all. No, they turned it down before telling me.”<\/p>\n
Engels didn’t “kick up a fuss” at the move being blocked and O’Neill says “we can re-look at things in the summer”.<\/p>\n
O’Neill did not feel the need to speak to Engels, saying: “I think his agent was happy enough with the situation. He said this is it, Arne is happy here, he wants to see what the season will bring at the end.”<\/p>\n
After adding five players in total, O’Neill was asked if he has the squad to win the title, replying: “My view is exactly the same as it was when I arrived here. We’re chasing. And at the end of it all, we’re behind. It’s in Hearts’ hands, we’ve got no room for error.”<\/p>\n
On newly-signed winger Joel Mvuka, whose from Lorient became a loan deal after a reported issue in his medical, O’Neill says: “I’m not going into any great detail, I don’t think that that’s right. But it has ended like that there. He’s fine, everyone is happy with the way that it has materialised. And we’ll see. He’s a really great lad and if his football matches his character, we’re in business.”<\/p>\n
On fan frustration over Celtic not buying any players in the window, O’Neill says they had “a deal set up” for Frosinone winger Fares Ghedjemis but he “chose to stay”.<\/p>\n
The Celtic boss adds: “Those things happen in the game. It happens from 1 January, it happens on the 24th and it happens late on. So that does happen, it’s happened every single time. You can have things set up and be thwarted.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"O’Neill confirms he is “very interested” in signing former Arsenal and England midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and has held…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-406065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}