Celtic Transfer Summit: O'Neill Accelerates Signings

The club have four priorities on the table and O'Neill wants them in sooner rather than later Celtic chiefs are in a transfer summit this evening - as they look to land new signings ahead of their top of the table clash with Hearts. Manager Martin O’Neill, chief executive Michael Nicholson and first-team coach Shaun Maloney, along with scouting staff, have assembled at Lennoxtown. O’Neill had said after the Scottish Cup win over Auchinleck Talbot that he hoped to make signings this week, ahead of Sunday’s clash against Derek McInnes’ league leaders. The main priority remains getting another striker in. Celtic have taken details about targets on their list and from this meeting tonight they are expected to narrow things down and push to finalise deals. They have been linked with Lorient’s Mohamed Bamba and Chelsea’s David Datro Fofana. Celtic have a shortlist of players and they had a number of targets watched again over the weekend. O’Neill was spotted at the Motherwell vs Ross County game at the weekend and automatically he was linked with the Steelmen’s top scorer Tawanda Maswanhise. They are also looking at wide options, central defenders and possibly to bring in another goalkeeper. Celtic have made just one signing in this window and it was former boss Wilfried Nancy who brought in Julian Araujo from Bournemouth on-loan. If Celtic do decide to take in another defender then it could open the door for Stephen Welsh to return to Motherwell on loan. He spent the first half of the season there but O’Neill recalled him to run the rule over him and he also played more than an hour in the cup at the weekend. That means that Motherwell is the only option if he leaves Celtic, unless he goes to a team in a summer season. Follow Record Sport on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for all of the up-to-the minute breaking news, video and audio on the SPFL, the Scotland national team and beyond. You can get all the news you need on our dedicated Celtic page, and sign up to our newsletters to make sure you never miss a beat throughout the season. We're also on WhatsApp where we bring all the latest breaking news and transfer gossip directly to you phone. Join our Celtic community here.