CELTIC today denied reports they have finally secured the £3.75million transfer of Auxerre star Gabriel Tamas.

Sources in France, and in the defender's homeland in Romania, claimed the long-running deal has now been concluded - with the 24-year-old accepting terms on a £20,000-per-week four-year contract.

But the Parkhead club shot these reports down. Celtic are not only still speaking to Auxerre, but are also keeping open lines of communication with Le Mans with a view to signing their Serbian centre-back, Marko Basa, should the Tamas deal suffer a fatal hitch.

Le Mans had originally demanded £7.5m for Basa. But, following several rounds of talks, it is understood this figure has been knocked down to nearer £4.5m.

That brings him in line with Celtic's valuation of the exper-ienced player. And it would only require personal terms to be agreed to make Basa, and not Tamas, Gordon Strachan's third signing of the close-season following the arrival of Paddy McCourt from Derry City and Georgios Samaras from Manchester City. However, Tamas has always been considered to be top of Strachan's shopping list.

And, if Celtic can seal the deal, the manager will be delighted to add the man who played at Euro 2008 to his squad.

Bobo Balde will be moving out on a free, provided he can find a club willing to pay him his £1m-plus per-season wages.

But, there has been no rush of offers, and the big Guinean is expected to remain on Celtic's books for at least another couple of weeks.

Balde is training with the squad here in the Algarve and will continue to act as back- up for Gary Caldwell and Stephen McManus in the meantime.

When the work to recruit a new centre-back is concluded, the emphasis will switch once more to adding another left-back and a holding midfield player.

Strachan has already seen his squad depleted after just two pre-season games, the win at 2-0 Southampton and the 3-1 defeat at Fulham.

He will have to think carefully about which side he fields against Middlesbrough tonight in their opening game in the Faro Tournament which is being screened live on Setanta.

With a match against Cardiff to come on Thursday, Chris Killen and Evander Sno on Olympic duty and Ben Hutchinson and McCourt still struggling with hamstring injuries, the squad is already looking stretched.

Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink and Artur Boruc have both been doing extra training sessions since joining up with the squad on Sunday, and a decision on their participation will be made later today when Strachan has checked on how they have reacted to their work-outs. Shunsuke Nakamura is also back in training after his summer exertions with Japan.

But, along with countryman Koki Mizuno, the Japanese midfielder has been working away from the main group and the pair will almost certainly miss out on this week's games in Faro and Saturday's match in Porto.