Martin O’Neill has described the club’s decision to rebuff Nottingham Forest’s pursuit of Arne Engels as ‘remarkable,’ while urging both the board and fans to work towards repairing their relationship…
Forest made three separate approaches for the 22-year-old Belgian midfielder, with their final proposal reportedly rising to £25million in total value.
O’Neill told talkSPORT that he admired Celtic’s board for standing firm against interest from the Premier League club given the Hoops are battling it out with Hearts and the Ibrox club to win the title.
O’Neill said: “No, the board turned it down. Obviously, it’s arrived very, very late in the day, and we had these offers coming in.”
“I actually did a press conference just after our game against Falkirk, unaware that there’d been an offer gone in. I think that the press seemed to get to know about them before the club did.”
“But anyway, that’s beside the point. It was very late in proceedings, and the board turned them down. Considering the amounts of money that you’re talking about, because that would be very, very big up here, that was remarkable.”
Addressing how things currently stand between the board and supporters, O’Neill went on to say: “I’m hoping that there’ll be some sort of reconciliation between everyone. I think that is absolutely necessary at the football club. For us to go forward now, to get ourselves going, we qualified at least for another two games into the knockout stages of the Europa League.”
“The atmosphere against Utrecht was really, really good, but we can do with a reconciliation, no question about that.”
“I think you think I’ve just come up here and feel as if I’m some mediator that’s going to try and sort a few things out. I’m up here to try and win a couple of football matches. If there’s a bit of shenanigans going on in the background, I can’t do anything about that at this minute.”
“But seriously, when I get an opportunity, I shall try and join the Peace Corps sometime and try and work it out from there.”
Martin repeated much of this and said much more at his media conference later in the day which you can watch below…
Conor Spence
Our passing broke down cause our front man was coming into his half and not holding onto it it was so frustating for players and fans hopefully our new signing even on loans we have a new manager coming in he might not want them so loan to buy is a good yet some people you will never please abd a boycot dosent help players confidence they think boycott means fans are not happy with the quality of signings but we know its a long boring argument against the board and some fans childish but thats what anirchyst do attack the money men i cant see it helping players on the pitch