Packie Bonner is thought to be in line for his first English club appointment when Reading announce the name of their new assistant manager later in the week.

Ever since his former Celtic team-mate, Tommy Burns was appointed to succeed Terry Bullivant as Reading's manager, there has been speculation that Bonner would follow him to England.

Burns declined to confirm that the Irishman will again be linking up with him but added that he hoped to make an announcement about his number two within "a couple of days".

It would mark a significant step for the Republic of Ireland's record breaking goalkeeper who spent 18 years with Celtic before being released by the club last season.

Since then, his only involvement has been as part time goalkeeping coach to the Republic of Ireland team but he has always made it clear that he intended to stay in the game for as long as possible.

Apart from his qualifications to coach goalkeepers, Bonner had some experience of working with Celtic's reserve team in the closing stages of his stay at Parkhead. More recently, he was thought to have been an applicant for the national director of coaching post which the FAI advertised last year.

That job is now available again following Brian Hamilton's rejection of it some months ago and in that context, a move to Reading could be doubly important for Bonner. Ray Houghton, his team-mate on many of his 80 international appearances, was in charge of coaching at Reading, in the season just ended.