Celtic manager denies contract negotiations with Lennon have stalled

CELTIC manager Martin O’Neill has denied that contract negotiations with Neil Lennon had stalled.

He confirmed that the midfielder’s agent Jerome Anderson met with club chief executive Peter Lawwell yesterday and he is still optimistic of him staying beyond this season.

Reports suggested that the former Northern Ireland international rejected an official offer and could be ditched to free up the cash to bring in on-loan striker Craig Bellamy on a permanent basis.

Despite being 34 in June, Lennon has offers on the table from a number of Barclays Premiership clubs, who will no doubt offer him more money than the Celtic Park board. However, O’Neill believes that his love for the Glasgow giants could be enough to persuade him to sign a new contract.

“Talks have been going well,” he insisted.

“Peter was speaking with Neil’s agent today at some stage or another but as far as I know the conversations have been going pretty well and I’ll be speaking to him very shortly.

“I would like Neil to stay at the football club and he will have a number of offers. He is in pretty good shape and some of the clubs will offer him reasonably good money.

“But knowing Neil it might not boil down to that. It might boil down to the fact that he is enjoying it here at the football club but just because he enjoys playing here doesn’t mean he will be here forever and ever.

“Neil has had a few problems in Glasgow off the field but the majority of the fans would like him to stay.”

O’Neill took Lennon with him from Leicester to Celtic in December 2000 for a fee of £5.75 million but he rejected the notion that it will be emotional farewell when the pair are finally separated.

“Neil has a life to lead,” he joked. “On occasions he has been in a spot of bother, some his own making but not a lot.

“But I am not going to phone him at 12 o’clock like his surrogate father. We have our own families to think about.

“If he never saw me in life again he will be only too delighted and I won’t be phoning him in 25 years and saying, ‘remember the first championship we won at Celtic’.”

O’Neill also claimed yesterday that his relationship with chairman Brian Quinn was just as good as it was when he joined the football club back in June 2000.

But there was a glint of mischief in his eye when he reacted to this week’s extraordinary gaffe when the Hoops chief phoned a teenager in Walsall rather than his public relations officer to complain about his manager.

O’Neill said: “I thought it was exceptionally funny and there’s absolutely no problem.

“It’s Old Firm week and there has to be a story along the way.

“My relationship with Brian is as good as it was when I signed at the football club for a start.

“I won’t go into details, but people closer to my household thought they were funny as well.”