O'Neill wants to strengthen squad

MTK Hungaria 0, Celtic 4

Celtic manager Martin O’Neill wants to add to his squad now the club are virtually assured a place in the group stage of the Champions League.

Henrik Larsson, Didier Agathe, Stilian Petrov and Chris Sutton were on target as Celtic destroyed MTK Hungaria 4-0 in the first leg of the third qualifying round in Budapest.

The margin of victory surprised O’Neill and he hopes the prospect of money-spinning ties against Europe’s finest will encourage the club’s directors to free funds for him to sign players.

O’Neill said: “I think if we are going into what is effectively the best football competition in the world then we would like, if possible, to add quality to the team.

“I am not going to go into what players or what positions but it is something we would like to do.

“We are in a very strong position for the Champions League and we still have a couple of weeks left.”

O’Neill admitted he had feared last night’s tie would be abandoned because of a faulty sprinkler system.

The match was halted for several minutes with the game at 2-0 after a fountain of water spurted over the pitch and O’Neill feared his players would have to go through it all again.

He said: “It was causing us all concern for a minute or two – the last thing we wanted at 2-0 up was the game to be abandoned.

“Obviously we didn’t want to have to play the game again and thankfully it was all under control quickly.”

The second leg at Parkhead now looks like a formality and O’Neill admits he was surprised at how easy they swept aside MTK in front of their own supporters.

He added: “I am sure they are disappointed with themselves and I did not expect to score four goals.

“I wanted the tie still to be alive for the game at Parkhead and, if pushed, I would have said I was willing to settle for a score draw or even not getting beat beforehand – this is obviously even better than we had hoped.”

MTK coach Sandor Egervari admits his side’s Champions League hopes are now dead – even though they still have the trip to Glasgow.

He said: “Our dreams were ruined. We always knew there was a big gap between Celtic and ourselves but we hoped to make that smaller on the pitch but they were too strong.

“We made mistakes and Celtic did not allow us the create the same chances they did.”