GORDON STRACHAN last night revealed Martin O'Neill's first move to be reunited with Stilian Petrov at Aston Villa had not altered Celtic's determination to retain the player.
The current and former Parkhead managers held a telephone conversation on Thursday in which Petrov was a talking point. O'Neill has made signing the Bulgarian a priority since taking charge at Villa Park but it is understood his transfer budget could be limited to just GBP7m until a takeover of the club is completed. That total is approximately the same as Celtic's valuation of the player, an injury doubt for tomorrow's match against Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
The Bank of Scotland Premierleague champions have stood firm since declining Petrov's transfer request late last season and are not thought to be interested in player exchanges proposed by Villa.
"I spoke to Martin O'Neill yesterday and the situation has not changed one little bit, " said Strachan last night. "It was just a chat, there were no formal bids as such.
"We went on to talk about other things and there was no indication about a further conversation."
While at Celtic, O'Neill built up a reputation as a manager who loved to indulge in brinkmanship by signing players on deadline day. Strachan, though, insisted he could not afford to entertain offers for any players if it left no time for replacements to be secured.
To satisfy O'Neill's ambition, Villa will have to raise the funds before August 31, even without their new backers in place.
"What all the players have is a valuation by me of how important they are to the club, " said Strachan. "Their presence is sometimes greater than the financial aspect."
In terms of additions, Strachan admitted the obvious stumbling block to be overcome to realise his hope of Thomas Gravesen trading Real Madrid for Celtic.
"There would have to be some homework done on those wages and we would like to try to keep him in the structure we have just now, " added the manager.
Strachan confirmed that Celtic remained in negotiations with Wolves over Lee Naylor, the left-back, but is unwilling to accept the Coca-Cola Championship club's demand for a player, understood to be any one of Stephen Pearson, Ross Wallace or Charlie Mulgrew to be included in addition to a GBP600,000 fee.
"What I'm trying to do is sign people and keep everybody here because we need a big squad, " he said.
Wolves, though, are holding their line, with Jez Moxey, their chief executive, insisting the deal is down to Celtic.
"We have told them that we will agree to their second cash offer plus one of three of their players in whom we are interested, " said Moxey. "The ball is in Celtic's court."
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