The ‘Ronny Roar’ has turned into a whimper in Europe this season. In fact Celtic have gone back two steps from last season when it seemed as though Ronny Deila had started to get his tactics right on the continent.

This season a lot of the players seem to have lost heart and desire to reach the games highest levels. Defensively the Hoops have often crumbled at set-pieces and look fragile to counter attacks. Concentration levels have also been at an all time low.

The Celtic boss doesn’t have any answers to the growing list of problems and he and his management team look visibly out of their depth.

Celtic Park used to be a fortress for the Glasgow side in Europe. But this term they’ve failed to win in their last two home games and lost 2-1 to Molde last night. In the game against the Norwegian’s the Hoops once again lacked organisation.

At the start of this campaign, assistant manager John Collins stated his club weren’t helped by their domestic rivals describing them as ‘slow’ and not smart enough. Unfortunately for Collins those are the same things that are now being used to describe Celtic’s European performances.

Now Deila has been let down by a tight board who constantly waits last minute before making any signings. Those signings are often from the bargain bucket. The once famed Celtic scouting system is also losing a bit of it’s shine as they pick up one too many duds.

But really a club like Celtic should still have enough about them to put sides like Malmo and Molde to the sword.

So that leads me back to the manager and whether or not the time is right to get rid of him.

Now if I were Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell I’d be seriously thinking about offloading Ronny at the end of the season and plan for that departure now by drawing up a list of candidates I wanted to sound out.

Then come January I would start to approach two or three potential new gaffers and have your chosen man in place for the day after Deila leaves in May.

On who to go for?

Well Paul Lambert’s name will obviously be mentioned as he was a successful former captain. But did he do enough at Villa to convince the Celtic fanbase he’s right for the big job? Another former hero Henrik Larsson could be in the mix again.

Could they go back and try and persuade experienced Dutch manager Guus Hiddink to finally come to Celtic Park. He may be sixty-eight now but you can bring him in for two seasons and turn things around in Europe and then hand the job on to a young coach who can take things on. But beware the Netherlands had that plan and it failed spectacularly last year.

To be honest the Celtic board need to concentrate on doing their own jobs properly before bringing in a new boss. It’s clear the current business model isn’t helping the team on the park. If the standard of football continues to go down then some fans will just stop turning up at home games, especially if they think their voice isn’t being heard in the boardroom.

It’s almost as if Celtic have been waiting for Rangers to get back into Scotland’s top flight and by doing that their own club have suffered on the field and the fans have been short changed. The last few seasons should have been about Celtic improving in Europe and becoming a constant fixture in the Champions League group stages.

I think Ronny Deila’s time is up. His management style and his personality doesn’t sit well with the majority of the fans. His European results have gone backwards and when a decline like that sets in then you really should look at binning your manager.

But it can’t end there, the board need to realise that they to have made big mistakes and owe it to the supporters to start making big decisions earlier and get those decisions right!

Posted on November 6th, 2015 by scott
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