Why Aurele Amenda is unlikely to join Celtic as Martin O’Neill hunts defender

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The confirmations of two Celtic signings are pending on deadline day.

Martin O’Neill has confirmed that Junior Adamu and Joel Mvuka are both having medicals ahead of last-minute moves to Glasgow.

Central attacker Adamu will join on a six-month loan deal from Freiburg, whilst rapid winger Joel Mvuka will join on a permanent deal from Lorient for £3 million.

For Celtic, the focus is now seemingly turning to the backline, with Stephen Welsh waiting for the green light to move to Motherwell.

But one Celtic-linked defender, Aurele Amenda, does not look likely to be heading to Parkhead before the deadline.

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Celtic target Aurele Amenda likely to stay at Frankfurt

6 ft 6 in defender Amenda was linked with Celtic in the middle of the month, with a potential loan move on the cards for the Swiss defender.

He moved from BSC Young Boys to Frankfurt for £8 million two years ago, but was reportedly searching for more game time in a bid to aid his bid for a place at the World Cup this summer.

READ MORE: Damir Redzic set for Deadline Day medical as Celtic miss out on January target

But a lot has happened since then. Frankfurt boss Dino Toppmoller was dismissed after a 3-3 draw against Werder Bremen, being replaced by Dennis Schmitt on an interim basis.

Over the last week under the watch of Schmidt, Amenda has played every minute of all three of Frankfurt’s fixtures.

Additionally, he now has a new permanent manager, in the form of former Liverpool man Albert Riera, who arrived in Germany to begin work on Monday.

With a fresh start on offer, Amenda is unlikely to leave the German side today – especially to Celtic, with plenty of other clubs in the race.

Mainz, Lorient, Torino, Nice and Valencia have all also been credited with an interest, with the latter pursuing a move most recently.

As O’Neill continues to hunt for a centre-half, it doesn’t look likely to be Amenda, or Jamie Lawrence, who Celtic have also been linked with.

Martin O’Neill on Celtic’s Stephen Welsh

Speaking about Welsh’s Celtic future earlier in the month, O’Neill told BBC Radio Scotland, “We’ll see, if you didn’t mind tonight, it’s not really heavily in my thoughts. He’s a really good lad. He trained with us the other day. We’ll see.

“We’ll have a little look at that situation. I didn’t realise this at the time. Obviously, I’m not favoured with all of the rules, quite a few have been made up since I was last managing.

“But we had to recall otherwise, if it went past a certain date, then you couldn’t do that. Stephen has had a really great time at Motherwell.

“He’s enjoying himself immensely. And yeah, and if he ends up staying with us, then battle on to try and get into the side.”