Celtic's latest signing Scott Brown has revealed he had no intention of moving to the Premiership once the Scottish double winners made their interest known.

The Scotland midfielder was unveiled at Celtic Park today after signing a five-year deal following his reported £4.4million move from Hibernian - a record transfer between two Scottish clubs.

Brown agreed the deal almost two weeks ago as the Scottish Premier League champions fended off competition from Reading and Middlesbrough.

Everton, Tottenham and Bolton had also been linked with the 21-year-old, while Rangers dropped their interest when the price shot up.

Fresh from Saturday's Tennent's Scottish Cup triumph, Celtic boss Gordon Strachan thanked chief executive Peter Lawwell and the Parkhead board for financing the record deal.

Brown spoke to the media before joining up with the Scotland squad for a training session this evening ahead of Wednesday's friendly in Austria and the Euro 2008 qualifier in the Faroe Islands seven days later.

When asked if he had considered moving south, he said: "No. Once I spoke to Peter and Gordon that was my mind made up. I wanted to join Celtic.

"Why not join Celtic? They are a good club, they have won the SPL and they won another cup a couple of days ago.

"They made the last 16 of the Champions League, so you can't say no to that."

Strachan said: "Our priority was to get Scott Brown so I thank the board for allowing us to do what we set out to do.

"It doesn't always happen that you get your number-one target, so it says a lot about the club and what we want to do."