Martin O'Neill reveals Celtic transfer hope, explains Motherwell visit and has say on Michel-Ange Balikwisha

Celtic struggled to a 2-0 victory over the West of Scotland Premier League side at Rugby Park thanks to a first-half goal from Johnny Kenny and a late wonder strike from Sebastian Tounekti.

The performance highlighted the need for January reinforcements with left-back Julian Araujo on loan from Bournemouth remaining the only addition 18 days into the window.

Celtic now travel to Bologna for a midweek Europa League fixture but O'Neill expects new signings to arrive in time for the top of the table clash against Hearts next weekend.

"We are very, very hopeful that we will get some people in," O'Neill said.

The Northern Irishman was spotted at the Motherwell v Ross County cup match the previous day amid links to Zimbabwean striker Tawanda Maswanhise, who scored the only goal of the game at Fir Park.

"That was a football mission," O'Neill explained. "That's part of my job, to look at games if I can get an opportunity and we did that after training. I went with [Mark] Fotheringham and it was nice."

Asked if the Scottish transfer market was of interest, O'Neill replied: "Absolutely there are players here, no doubt about it, that are capable of playing at a higher level, but that's only my opinion."

O'Neill made 10 changes against Auchinleck and felt that was one reason behind the team's lacklustre display.

"We weren't fantastic," he admitted. "We were comfortable with a lot of possession but weren't able to break them down often enough. And when we did create some chances we missed them.

"I wanted to change the side around because there were a couple of players that haven't played under me that I would have liked to have seen. Making changes like that does disrupt the flow of things so we saw that one through.

"Players when they feel this is an opportunity for them can get a bit nervous about things. I probably wasn't surprised from what I saw. We as a team could do a lot better but we saw it through."

Asked about the performance of Michel-Ange Balikwisha, the £5million summer signing from Royal Antwerp who made his first start since September, O'Neill added: "He did okay. He was striving for a start for quite some considerable time, so he got it.

"I know Paulo [Bernardo] played a couple of times under Wilfried [Nancy]. It was his first start under me too so he got the 90 minutes and Balikwisha got most of the game."