{"id":408485,"date":"2026-02-05T02:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T02:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/408485\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T02:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T02:17:09","slug":"martin-oneill-reveals-celtic-transfer-recruitment-fears-over-tisdales-targets-plus-update-on-oxlade-chamberlain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/408485\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin O’Neill reveals Celtic transfer recruitment fears over Tisdale’s targets plus update on Oxlade-Chamberlain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 73-year-old made a hasty return to the Parkhead dugout as he answered an SOS and has served it up straight<\/p>\n

19:04, 04 Feb 2026Updated 23:03, 04 Feb 2026<\/p>\n

Alex Oxlade Chamberlain – Celtic targets career in numbers<\/p>\n

Up-front Martin O’Neill<\/a> has revealed he didn’t believe flop signing chief Paul Tisdale’s transfer targets were befitting of a club of Celtic’s stature.<\/p>\n

The 73-year-old made a hasty return to the Parkhead dugout<\/a> as he answered an SOS for the second time this season after Wilfried Nancy’s disastrous eight games in charge.<\/p>\n

Tisdale was instrumental in bringing the hapless Frenchman to Celtic Park and plans changed during the January when the pair were axed following the chastening 3-1 defeat to Rangers.<\/p>\n

Impressive Julian Araujo arrived under the previous regime before O’Neill and Shaun Maloney oversaw four subsequent loan signings in the form of Tomas Cvancara, Junior Adamu, Joel Mvuka and Brentford kid Benjamin Arthur<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

O’Neill talking to Sutton <\/p>\n

And now O’Neill admits he feared the previous regime were eyeing players unbecoming of turning out for the club who have won 13 of the past 14 Premiership titles.<\/p>\n

In a wide-ranging sitdown on Sky Sports with Record Sport’s Chris Sutton, O’Neill revealed his debt of gratitude to the board for kicking out Nottingham Forest’s \u00a325m bid for Arne Engels, provided an update of his pursuit of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and served it up straight over Tisdale’s reign of error.<\/p>\n

Speaking on transfer targets post-Tisdale, O’Neill said: “I think, if you’re asking me honestly, I wasn’t totally convinced about the recruitment for Celtic Football Club. It is still a big club. And the ambition of the football club is to play big European matches, to be involved in big European games.”<\/p>\n

And he heaped praise on the club’s decision makers for not wilting amid the sizeable bid from Forest for Engels on Deadline Day. He added: “We’ve actually turned down big, big money (for Engels) . I know it was very, very late in the transfer market. And, getting ideal replacements in was going to be difficult, but that might show you a sign that at least we’ve held onto our players.<\/p>\n

“Did I go into the board and say, ‘you’ve got to stop this one?’ No, I didn’t. They stopped it themselves. They’ve got to get some credit for that.”<\/p>\n

O’Neill provided a further update on free agent Oxlade-Chamberlain<\/a> as he remains keen on bringing the former Arsenal and Liverpool standout to Celtic.<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old is training with the Gunners but the Irishman hasn’t given up on all hope that he can tempt the former England international north of the border.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Former Celtic Head of Football Operations Paul Tisdale <\/p>\n

O’Nell said: “We were speaking to Oxlade-Chamberlain. I think he’s working down on his training at Arsenal at this moment. Arsenal may even offer him a contract, I think that that’s the case. I was astonished that it hadn’t been picked up.<\/p>\n

“I know it, he was talking about the difficulties out in Turkey. But someone of that sort of experience would have been, would have been great.<\/p>\n

“It may still happen because he’s out of contract, he will have a number of options probably closer to home. But if that materialised, that would give us something.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 73-year-old made a hasty return to the Parkhead dugout as he answered an SOS and has served…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2817,18667,18666,12431,218,30905,103666,8058,101,2719,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-408485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-celtic-fc","tag-celtic-transfer-news","tag-chris-sutton","tag-dermot-desmond","tag-football","tag-martin-oneill","tag-michael-oneill","tag-scottish-premiership","tag-sports","tag-transfer-talk","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408485","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=408485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}