Brendan Rodgers refused to be drawn on whether he is plotting to bring Kieran Tierney back to Celtic, although he did describe the Scotland and Arsenal left-back as “one of us”.
The 27-year-old left his boyhood club to join the Gunners in 2019 but has fallen out of favour under Mikel Arteta in recent seasons and his contract is due to expire next summer.
Tierney has recovered from the hamstring injury he sustained playing for Scotland at Euro 2024 in June and made his first appearance of the season in Arsenal’s Carabao Cup win over Crystal Palace on Wednesday.
The defender – who spent last season on loan at Real Sociedad – played under Rodgers during his first spell as Celtic boss and has been linked with a return to Glasgow in the new year.
“Yeah, we’ll always be linked with top players, and especially players that are one of us,” Rodgers said, speaking at a media briefing on Friday.
“Kieran was an instrumental part of a really, really successful period when I was here, and his talents then took him on to another challenge in the Premier League.
“So, yeah, we’ll be linked with lots of names, Kieran obviously, naturally because of his situation. But for us, we’ll only ever tell you when we sign a player, once he’s signed.”
Rodgers is hopeful that another Scotland left-back, Greg Taylor, will extend his contract beyond the end of this season.
“Greg’s so important for our squad,” said Rodgers. “He’s a player that I’ve really enjoyed working with so much on and off the pitch, and I really want him to stay. I’m hoping that between the club and his representatives, we can organise a deal.
“But I also understand he’s 27 now, this will be one of the last big contracts of his career, so he has to make sure that everything is right.”
Homegrown defender Stephen Welsh, 24, is likely to move away from Celtic in January after being restricted to just one Premier Sports Cup appearance all season.
“Stephen’s very much been a part of the furniture here, a great member of our squad,” said Rodgers. “Naturally, we will have some players in our squad that will want to play games, and Stephen may well be one of those players.
“He’s a brilliant servant for this club. The likes of him and Tony Ralston, who plays a little bit more than what Stephen does, these guys are still absolutely critical to the culture of this club. But of course sometimes they then have to think about themselves and they’ve got to think about their careers.
“So I’m pretty sure there’ll be some movement with some players looking to get game time and play. We all respect that.”
James Forrest is set to be sidelined until February with the foot injury he sustained during extra-time in Sunday’s Premier Sports Cup final victory over Rangers.
“James will be probably six weeks,” said Rodgers. “He had a real sort of bad blow in the game, and to be fair to him he carried on, he showed great courage to do that. But sadly, we’ll miss him for up to that length of time.”
