Everton manager Roberto Martinez has refused to rule out a move for Celtic defender Virgil van Dijk.

Speaking after watching his side defeat Hearts in yesterday's friendly, Martinez side-stepped the question of whether the highly-rated Dutchman was on his list of targets with the same sort of skill that his players had displayed in a wonderful showing at Tynecastle.

He said: "That's the nature of this period, you are going to be linked with players.

"I don't enjoy talking about other players when they are not at our football club and I will never be disrespectful in that manner.

"We are still looking for two positions. Our squad is not completed, we are looking for two positions and we need to make sure they fit in exactly in the group, in the manner we want and expect as footballers and human beings.

"But in terms of speaking about names, as you can understand, I wouldn't be able to.

"Central defence is one of those positions. We lost two centre-halves, two experienced centre-halves left the squad, so we need to fill those gaps.

"I'm still assessing two of the young players we've got in the squad and I've been very impressed in the last two weeks. I feel probably they are ready to stay in the first-team.

"But maybe we need another new face in centre-half and then there's another position where we are still lightweight.

"We will wait as long as we can to select the person we want.”