RONNY Deila has told Virgil van Dijk and James Forrest that they are staying at the club.
The Dutch centre half has been linked with a multi-million pound move to Swansea City while the Scotland winger, who has a year left on his current deal, was connected with a switch to join his old boss Neil Lennon at Bolton Wanderers in the morning newspapers. At a media conference, the Norwegian told the club's official Twitter feed that both men were important players for the club and were going nowhere.
"Virgil is a very important player for us and now his task is helping us into the Champions League and I'm sure he will be motivated for that," said Deila. "James is going to stay here as well. Why go to Bolton when he is at Celtic? James is a very important player for us and we want to keep him here at Celtic."
The Norwegian welcomed the arrival of one centre half in the form of Dedryck Boyata from Manchester City, ahead of the club's opening Champions League qualifying match against FC Stjarnan of Iceland. Last year the club made it beyond the challenge of KR Reykjavik at the same stage.
"We have a lot of options at Celtic," said Deila. "We went for Boyata from Manchester City and we are very happy with that.
"It's a good draw," he added. "Every opponent you get is difficult. We are going to be favourites whoever we met. But we have experience of Icelandic teams. We have to have a good pre-season and make ourselves ready for the game. We have kept the squad for a long time and it's very strong, and I'm comfortable and happy with the players I have."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article