NEIL LENNON has ruled out making a marquee loan signing along the lines of Robbie Keane or Craig Bellamy when the transfer window opens on Wednesday.
Celtic sent shockwaves across Scottish football in early 2010 when Keane arrived on a short-term deadline day deal from Tottenham Hotspur, while the signing of Swedish international midfielder Ljungberg on a short-term basis later that year was another attempt to boost the box-office appeal of the Parkhead squad.
Players as illustrious as Dimitar Berbatov could be deemed surplus to requirements at Fulham this January, but the Northern Irishman is keen to lay solid foundations and only wants to add players who are prepared to stay on a permanent basis.
"No, I don't want to bring any players like that in because it won't serve any purpose going forward," said Lennon. "Any player we do bring in I would like to be permanent."
As such, the Northern Irishman is still searching for "three or four" new additions to his squad, with striker Holmbert Fridjonsson having already joined from Icelandic side Fram. One of them may or may not be Hiroki Yamada, with Lennon still non-commital about the Japanese international playmaker, who impressed on a week's trial at Lennoxtown recently.
"He's still in the mix," said Lennon, about the Jubilo Iwata player. "We haven't made a decision yet. We don't have to make a decision until the end of the month. He came in and did well, but we haven't said yes or no yet. We are trying to whittle it down to three or four players."
While there will be no unseemly haste to buy players in time for the trip to Turkey in mid-January, and the future of contract rebels Georgios Samaras and Joe Ledley has yet to be resolved, Lennon did indicate that the club would be taking up the option of a further year on the contract of Emilio Izaguirre, one of his most consistent players this year.
Lennon said: "Left-backs are hard to find and we have a really good one there. I've been pleased with the consistency he's shown and he's still at a good age at 25 with the best years in front of him."
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