NEIL LENNON is banking on the windfall from Celtic's Champions League run this season to provide the funds to keep Gary Hooper at the club.
The 25-year-old striker, who has a year left to run on his contract at the champions, was linked with several Barclays Premier League clubs during the January transfer window, but the Celtic manager said yesterday it was his "gut feeling" that Hooper would stay at the club.
Lennon, who signed the striker from Scunthorpe United for £2.4m in 2010, added: "He has been our leading goalscorer for the past three seasons. It is not just the volume of goals; he gets important ones, too. When you really need a goal, he pops up with the important one. It's pivotal that he stays."
Hooper, who was the subject of bids from Norwich City in January, scored two goals on Sunday as Celtic clinched the Clydesdale Bank Premier League title with a 4-1 win over Inverness Caledonian Thistle at Celtic Park.
He said the cause of retaining Hooper was helped by Celtic making a profit of almost £15m in the second half of last year after a Champions League group campaign in which they qualified for the last 16 of the competition.
'Our policy is to bring young boys in, develop them and sell them on," said Lennon. "We have plenty of assets in the team for the first time in a long, long time but, on the back what we did in the Champions League, I don't think there is the pressure on the board to have to sell now. Our preference is to get him a new contract and keep him for a little bit longer."
In a radio interview with BBC Radio 5, he dismissed suggestions that the winning of the title was "easy" and said Celtic had won the league with large margins in the past while Rangers, now in the Irn-Bru Third Division, were in the top league. "There is no doubt the fans miss the edge, the general to and fro between both sets of fans," he said of Rangers' banishment to the fourth tier of Scottish football.
But he added: "In terms of competition, in my time this is the eighth championship we have won and five of those were won by 17 or more points with Rangers in the league. The only time it has been close is when it goes to the final game of the season with Rangers. It is never easy. For me, you would denigrate what the players had done if you said it was easier."
Lennon singled out Kris Commons for praise for the improvement in the Scottish internationalist's form this season but added of his team: "They have worked wonders this season."
Samaras interview, Page 5
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