Celtic boss O'Neill eager to keep Johnston & Engels for play-off

Martin O'Neill hopes Celtic can keep Arne Engels and Alistair Johnston for the Champions League play-off against Austrian champions LASK. West Ham are trying to sign 22-year-old Belgium midfielder Engels while Everton have targeted 27-year-old Canada full-back Johnston. Celtic will play at home in the first leg on 18/19 August, with the return game the following week. Both Engels and Johnston started the season opener on Monday night as Benjamin Nygren's header gave O'Neill's defending champions a 1-0 win over Dundee. O'Neill felt his side "did enough to win" but then was asked about the possibility of keeping Engels and Johnston for the European qualifiers. "Ideally, that would be brilliant, that would be really good," he said. "We wouldn't know if the other clubs would want to pursue that, if that was the case. "I'm quite sure that anybody starting off in their own particular leagues would want their players in as soon as possible. "But ideally, that would be great. I think that that's one of the things that we will definitely be looking at. "I seriously could not say for sure, you'd have to take players' thoughts into consideration and maybe the other clubs, but overall for me selfishly that would be great. "Alistair and Arne both said to me that they would want to play in the game if things had not progressed. And I thought they did fine. "Alistair has got a very strong mindset anyway. "But you are naturally worried about transfer speculation in the background and how you might take the game into consideration psychologically as well ask physically. "But I thought they did fine. I cannot update you on any progress from the other day because I don't know any." O'Neill reaffirmed his quest to further bolster his squad following the signings of strikers Camilo Duran and Kasper Hogh. He said: "Well, I'm hoping that we'll get some players in. That's the aim. We have two and they're decent players for us but we're striving to get some more in." [BBC]