Lennon: No panic signings

Neil Lennon has vowed not to be pushed into any panic signings during the January transfer window.

The world and it’s auntie must now know that the Celtic boss wants to bring in a striker and is prepared to pay £6m and break the club wage structure to get the right player in.

Getting the transfer market right in January is notoriously difficult with Lennon balancing up the need to prepare for July’s Champions League qualifiers against bloating the squad without any obvious improvement.

“What we can’t do is panic buy,” the Celtic boss stated. “There’s no point in just bringing a player in to make everything look good or allegedly look good. We don’t want to look desperate either.

“There will come a time where the deal is dead and what do we have next, so you look at the next option and you look at it quickly but I want to inject the squad and it’s not just for the short term, it’s for the long term.

“So we’ll try and avoid bringing in loans. The only loans we would do would be if there was an option to buy at the end of the loan because what we want is players to come in for the next two to three years.”

Explaining the dilemma he faces Lennon added: “You don’t have time, particularly in the summer when you are playing mid-July. It’s really difficult to get the players bedded in. So if we can get them for three or four months now then we’ll be in a better position and we may not have to do any business in the summer.”