Celtic laugh off row with O'Neill

There is absolutely no friction between myself and the chairman and, in fact, I actually find the whole incident quite amusing Martin O'Neill

Celtic chairman Brian Quinn and manager Martin O'Neill have attempted to laugh off a damaging rift between them.

O'Neill had publicly disputed Quinn's claims that only five sides in the English Premiership had higher wage bills than the Scottish champions.

Quinn responded by leaving a message on the answerphone of Walsall teenager Kayley Elkington, wrongly believing she was Celtic PR man Alex Barr.

But O'Neill said: "There's absolutely no friction between us."

Quinn does not deny he had left an answerphone message saying "I'm not going to let him call me a liar" on the phone of teenager Elkington.

But he added: "I'll take him through the salary bill with the help of a bottle of wine and my abacus."

O'Neill, who also said "I actually find the whole incident quite amusing", had contradicted his chairman's claim that Celtic spend more on wages that most English clubs.

"At my age, it's perhaps advisable to steer clear of new-fangled devices like mobile phones," Quinn said on Celtic's website.

The row had erupted, following a BBC Scotland radio interview, over Celtic's ability to buy Craig Bellamy from Newcastle United at the end of the in-form striker's loan spell in the summer.

Quinn said in the message: "I'm trying to head off yet another storm created by our esteemed manager who has now, I believe, contradicted the numbers I used in the radio interview given this morning.

"The £40m is total wages and salaries compared to Rangers' £30m, which is total wages and salary.

"Secondly, the statement that there are only five clubs in the Premier League with a higher wage bill was done after checking with the Celtic finance department, who named the five clubs in England and who got this stuff from benchmark data collected from published sources.

"I'm not going to be made a liar by Martin O'Neill, so you are going to have to use your skills to try and defuse this thing. Bye."

Both Martin O'Neill and Brian Quinn have let Celtic down badly these last few days From Frank Have your say on Fans' Forum

O'Neill had said earlier: "There's not a prayer of even the entire wage costs here being remotely near the figure quoted."

He was unconvinced by the suggestion that Quinn was talking about the club's wage bill as a whole - not just that of the players - and quoted Celtic's former contracts manager.

"I'm not going to get involved in an argument, but a man who left this club to work in the Premiership, Jim Hone, told me our wage bill wouldn't be in the top 12 of England," said O'Neill.

"You have to ask how much money have we spent in the transfer market since the Uefa Cup final in Seville in 2003. Even including a loan fee for Henri Camara, it's not a lot.

"But I'm not going down the road of conflict and have more important issues."