Martin O’Neill has revealed the motivation behind him urging the club to offer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain an extension to his short-term Celtic stay…
The Hoops boss has begun to make moves this summer window, extending the Oxlade-Chamberlain’s deal at Parkhead and also closing in on Colombian striker Camilo Duran.
Supporters are desperate for the club to get moving and add quality to a squad that has seen better days, with the same core group being asked to go to the well far too often now. That nearly cost us dearly last time out, as Hearts ran us within a whisker of dethroning us and winning a remarkable Scottish Premiership title.
With reinforcements required, O’Neill wasted no time in getting the powerbrokers to sign up the Ox to help maintain the squad depth and add that sprinkling of experience at the absolute top level of the game.
“I wanted Oxlade-Chamberlain to come back and he will join us in Portugal. In fact, he’ll be there before we get there so that’ll be nice,” O’Neill said, as reported by the Scottish Sun.
The Celtic boss reckons a full pre-season with the Bhoys under his belt will really benefit the midfielder.
“You can say all sorts of things but I think the pre-season with us, rather than intermittently with Arsenal and sometimes with Arsenal’s youth team, will be good for him,” he said. “I’m hoping that’s the case because he’s a very fine player.”
O’Neill even thinks the best is yet to come from the 32-year-old, saying: “Are the Celtic fans still to see the best of him? I think so, yes. I think there’s more to come. It’s not as if he’s that old or anything. I think he’s also loved it at the football club.
“Last season he probably would have liked some more minutes in games but some of his contributions were massive for us. There were two in particular which I know got us points that otherwise we wouldn’t have got.”
Paul Gillespie
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