Deila slams the door on his Euro doubters

Even this early, it could be the revival of the season.

Standing in the bowels of Murrayfield 16 days ago, Ronny Deila looked about as miserable as it’s possible for a football manager to look.

The Norwegian had just watched his Celtic side crash out of the Champions League, dismantled 6-1 on aggregate by Legia Warsaw. And as he attempted under media scrutiny to dissect successive defeats from the Poles, it seemed even he seemed to doubt whether his grand plan for the Hoops was going to work.

Two and a bit weeks on, and the 38-year-old has, little short of miraculously, ridden out the European storm.

If his side beat the Slovenians of Maribor by any score at Celtic Park on Tuesday night, or even hold them 0-0, they will advance to the group stages of Europe’s most prestigious club competition. In the process, they will pouch the not insignificant sum of £16-million.

That they owe their fortune, in large part, to Legia Warsaw is undeniable. Specifically to a clerical blunder by the Polish champions. Found to have fielded an ineligible player in the tie, the visitors had their 2-0 win overturned, and Celtic were awarded a 3-0 victory, enough to carry them through on away goals.

Yet that is where the contribution of the now notorious Bartosz Bereszynski begins and ends.

The reinvigorated Hoops who will run out to face the Slovenians will be almost unrecognisable from the disjointed, dispirited group who were taken apart by the Poles.

Domestic form remains erratic, with the six-goal demolition of Dundee United followed up by defeat in Inverness yesterday. But Deila can point to the 10 changes he made for the Highlands trip, and they remain overwhelming favourites to finish off the job against Maribor this week.

“I think we have the ship going in the right way now,” is Deila’s way of assessing the European progress. “I had the pressure for a lot of weeks. It is something I am used to. You get it at all other clubs. It is just this one is bigger.

“You have to think in a certain way, you have to do something with what you have. The first week was so much for me, everything was new. I had to take a step back, get control of the situation, and focus on the right things. Now we are going forward.”

And going forward with both purpose and direction. Deila’s belief in the value of hard work was billed well in advance. In the trawl to gather information about his record as a manager in Norway, it was a quality that was mentioned time and time again.

What was not so well advertised was his willingness to both admit and learn from his mistakes. Too open against the Poles, Celtic were pragmatic in their approach to their first leg against Maribor.

Kris Commons, the club’s most creative player, was benched. It was a move that surprised a few, but the midfielder was deemed as not defensively strong enough to play the wide role in the 4-2-3-1 formation favoured by the manager for the game.

And not enough of an attacking spearhead to lock down the lone striker role. Callum McGregor, the Hoops scorer in Maribor and one of the main beneficiaries of Deila’s appointment, explains.

“The manager puts a lot of emphasis on fitness and working hard. If you don’t, you won’t play,” he said. “He wants all of his players to work hard, on and off the ball.

“You have to put in a real shift for the team, and defensive duties are important. You can see the boys are working harder. They are getting fitter and stronger, so it is a good regime.”

Delia is also committed to long-term development, as evidenced by his pledge to use some of the Champions League cash, should they receive it, to build a protective dome at their Lennoxtown training base.

His goal is a group with a Scottish core, with players who know the culture, complemented by hard-working imports such as Stefan Johansen.

Some of the country’s top young talent has moved on to pastures new recently Andrew Robertson to Hull City, Stevie May to Sheffield Wednesday and Ryan Gauld to Sporting Lisbon. But Deila made it clear he’s keen to keep Scotland’s top kids in Scotland, more specifically at Celtic Park.

“If I can choose between a Scottish talent and a German talent, and they are equal, then I will take the former,” he said.

Positive wherever possible, pragmatic when not, Deila continues to impress.