The Ronny Deila Story – Celtic’s Bizarre Two Seasons under the Norwegian Manager

Be that as it may, Ronny arrived from nowhere – well from Stromgodset in Norway actually in summer 2014, as well known to Celtic fans as Wim Jansen and Jo Venglos had been when they came some years earlier, or indeed as familiar as Ange Postecoglou would be in 2021. The usual suspects for the job of Celtic Manager had been touted around in the Press with all sorts of journalists prepared to make a fool of themselves by stating categorically that “a source near the club told me late last night…” but it was the totally unknown Ronny Deila.

In this respect at least the Board deserved credit. Far too often in the past, the media had told clubs who their next Manager was going to be. They had certainly told the gullible Rangers Board a few years previously to appoint Paul le Guen…and to their cost, they had done so when the man obviously had little clue about the English language let alone the complexities or nuances of Scottish football.

But Ronny Deila it was and what a strange Scotland appeared to greet him with Celtic’s Premier League opponents being Aberdeen, Inverness Caledonian Thistle, St Johnstone, Dundee, Dundee United, Ross County, Kilmarnock, Motherwell, Hamilton, Partick Thistle and St Mirren. The obvious omissions were still floundering in the lower reaches, and there was also no-one from Edinburgh to worry about, the Capital being once again at a footballing low ebb.

But Edinburgh would see Celtic playing European football! The Commonwealth Games in 2014 were being held at, among other places, Celtic Park and that included a visit from, of all people, the Queen! Whatever the nuances and ironies of that situation – and how it hurt at Ibrox! – Celtic played a couple of Champions League games at Murrayfield, the home of Scottish rugby, beating Reykjavik but playing absolutely abysmally to lose to Legia Warsaw in a couple of games, home and away, where it was extremely difficult to find anything good to say about anyone’s performance – and it was already clear that Ronny Deila had a major job to do.

But then fate intervened. On a technicality, Celtic were awarded a 3-0 win in the Murrayfield game because the Poles had fielded an illegal player! As the first game in Poland had been 4-1, this meant that Celtic won the tie on away goals. One would have to say that this was fortuitous, to put it mildly, but then Celtic decided once again to infuriate their supporters by blowing up against a third rate Slovenian team called Maribor.

The 1-1 draw in Slovenia was acceptable, but the 0-1 defeat at Parkhead was one of the worst European experiences that we could remember, with all the traditional Celtic European failings of missing chances, and then being punished for it.

This game, coming between a defeat at Inverness and then a miserable draw at Dundee, made one wonder, but it was far too early in Deila’s career for the knives to be out. In any case there were some good results as well with Stefan Johansen, who had joined the club in the January transfer window of 2014 looking particularly impressive, and an on-loan player called John Guidetti who seemed to be leased out to many clubs on a season-to-season basis beginning to score goals. On the other hand, there were a few dismal flops as well.

In the Europa League, Celtic actually managed to qualify from a section containing Red Bull Salzburg, Astra Giurgiu and Dinamo Zagreb. The football was unimpressive, the three home games were played in front of a half-empty stadium, but Celtic won two, drew two and lost two, which was enough to qualify them, so that Ronny Deila could claim that he had achieved something that not all his predecessors could – namely that he would be playing in Europe after the New Year.

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