Lennon bats aside latest transfer speculation

Neil Lennon has batted aside claims that Zenit St Petersburg are ready to offer £12m for James Forrest.

The winger picked up the Player of the Year awards in May and has started the new season with vital goals away to Cluj and Motherwell as the hoops start the new season in scoring form.

Kieran Tierney’s transfer to Arsenal has opened the door for other home-grown players to discover life outside of Celtic but Forrest has only ever spoken about spending his career with Celtic.

Lennon gave Forrest his top team debut when he was caretaker boss in 2010 and has no intention of being the manager that sees the 28-year-old depart from the club he’s been with since his primary school days.

He is another one that we don’t want to go. A big player, a big goalscorer. He has been here a long, long time. He is under contract. There is no confirmation of that (Zenit interest), it is just speculation, but it doesn’t surprise me. However, from my point of view we want James here and he is happy here as well.

It’s important to hold on to your better players, we have already sold one so we don’t want to sell any more. We are looking to add to the squad rather than selling any more of our important players and James certainly falls into that category.

Last September Forrest signed a four year contract tieing him to Celtic until June 2022, his goal at Motherwell was 11 successive league season that he has scored in, the first Celtic player to achieve that since Paul McStay.