PAUL Hartley admits the signing of Georgios Samaras has boosted the Celtic players following his impact on the club's successful title push.
The Greece international striker, who scored six goals despite a limited number of starts after his January loan signing, yesterday completed a permanent transfer from Manchester City.
Samaras will now be keen to dislodge Scott McDonald and Jan
Vennegoor of Hesselink from the starting line-up after pledging his future to Celtic for three years. "He made a big impact when he came into the team," Hartley said.
"He scored a lot of important goals for us, so he is going to be a big player for us again.
"He enjoys his football here. He probably had other offers or he could have stayed at Man City but he wanted to come here and show what he can do."
Samaras is understood to have taken a £10,000 cut in his weekly wage to sign for the Scottish champions after taking to the "family" atmosphere at Parkhead.
And former Hibernian and Hearts midfielder Hartley, who signed for Celtic 18 months ago, agrees that the atmosphere is unique.
"This club is special, there is no doubt about that," the Scotland international said. "To play for a club the size of Celtic is a fantastic feeling, and as Samaras said, we have got a fantastic team spirit here.
"We all work hard together, try and win as many football games as we can. There is no better place to play your football.
"Every second week you are playing in front of a full house of 60,000, so why would you want to play anywhere else?"
The team spirit Hartley rates so highly helped Celtic to an unlikely Clydesdale Bank Premier League title win last season.
Gordon Strachan's men won their last seven games to lift the trophy on the final day after consecutive defeats by Rangers and Motherwell appeared to have ended their hopes.
Hartley said: "Everybody had written us off probably four or five months before the end of the season but we knew as a group of players that we were very strong mentally, and knew if we could keep a run of games going that we could win the championship. That's the way it ended up.
"This season is another new challenge again because everyone will have a stronger squad.
"It's not just Rangers who are adding players. Dundee United will be very strong again, Aberdeen, maybe Hearts will be a bit stronger too."
The full article contains 426 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
