Deila clarifies Forrest and Izaguirre’s future at Celtic

Ronny Deila has clarified James Forrest’s situation at Celtic after he rejected a new contract on Monday.

The 24-year-old winger still has 10-months remaining on his current contract, but rejected Celtic’s offer of a four-year deal in favour of seeing what other options are available to him.

A new contract would have secured his long-term future at the club he has spent the entirety of his professional career at since making his debut in 2010.

As quoted by STV, Deila commented on the situation, saying:

Of course we want to keep our best players. It’s not like now nothing is going to happen, you never know in football.

But he’s rejected it and now we have to take that forward and we know that he has one year left on his contract.

I haven’t spoken to James directly about this. We know James is a part of this squad and has been for many, many years.

We wanted to keep him here but it’s an issue between the club and the player.

There’s always negotiations but we got a ‘no’ for that offer that we felt was really good. We just have to keep going.

You can make a big deal out of this but for me it’s not a big deal. We want to keep James but this is happening all the time with different situations and different players and we have a lot of players here.

Norwich and QPR were linked with Forrest after news broke that he turned down a long-term deal, and could be among a host of clubs down south chasing him.Deila ruled out an exit for Emilio Izaguirre, despite suggestions from the defender’s homeland that his Honduras place could be at risk.

Deila also ruled Emilio Izaguirre leaving the club, despite suggestions from the Honduras that his place could be at risk in the national side.

Izaguirre has fallen out-of-favour under Deila due to the emergence of Kieran Tierney from the youth academy.

We can’t have only one full-back. He’s a great player and we have great competition on that side.

Everyone can see what KT [Kieran Tierney] has done but everybody respects what Emilio has done. We know that we have two very good full backs.

He’s a player that we want to keep, of course.

I talk to Emilio a lot, he comes into my office to talk. Of course he wants to play more, that’s for sure. Everybody in that squad wants to play.

Celtic’s next game is against Hamilton on Friday night at New Douglas Park.