THIS international break has come at the right time for Ronny Deila. The Celtic manager is a little frazzled.
By the time the Norwegian walked into the press room at New Douglas Park after his side’s 2-1 win over Hamilton Academical, he was his usual charming self, happy enough with his lot as he reminded everyone in the written press that Celtic have actually made a better start to this season than the last.
A few minutes after he left, word reached us that Deila has “gone off his head” on BT Sport during an interview. In his ever-so-polite Scandinavian terms, his rather mild rebuke to a, it must be said, legitimate question about his team’s defence was the equivalent of that time Jim McLean punched someone.
Deila doesn’t do angry like Scottish people, but while all season his defenders have been far from great, I do get why he could lose his cool over what he would perceive to be journalists questioning him on the bad things after what was after all a win.
Unfortunately for the Celtic manager, his team winning on the domestic scene is not news. Celtic making mistakes is. They won’t stop the presses on the New York Times when they hear that the richest club in Scotland by a country mile managed to see off Hamilton who ‘boast’ the Premmier League’s smallest budget.
But that isn’t Deila’s fault. It’s not his doing that Rangers aren’t around, neither are Hibernian and Hearts dropped out of the top tier for a year, as if he or anyone would knock back the Celtic job because there aren’t any Old Firm games any more.
Deila is being judged more on the defeats than the wins, which is both understandable and unfair all at the same time.
If he does win a Treble, far from a given, there will still be some fans who are going to say; “Aye, but he made an a*** of the Champions League.”
The man is damned is if he wins by lots and damned if we wins by the odd goal. This is Celtic 2015; Shane Meadows should make a film about it.
In saying all that, something does need to be done about his team losing so many soft goals.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel