RONNY DEILA has been named Scottish Premiership Manager of the Month for April.
The Celtic boss masterminded an impressive run of form during the month that led to them securing the successful defence of their title at the start of this month – the club’s fourth successive triumph.
Looking back at April Ronny said: “It was good month if I look back, but since Christmas we’ve had a very good spell of games, results and also some very good play, so April wasn’t any different as it was the same as the month before.
“Individual awards don’t mean much to me. It’s a reward to me but to me it’s for the whole staff. We work together every day and we work very well together, so this is a reward for everybody.
“And, of course, without the players I don’t think we would get this reward so this is a team sport so I take this as recognition for good work as a group.
“I love to go to Lennoxtown every day and work with the staff and the players. We have our goals and that’s what’s important. We have to reach them and we have reached a lot of the goals this year.
“Now we’re happy to have won the league but everybody knows now the next step is coming up and that’s the Champions League.
“We want to finish the season well by winning games and training well to get ready for the Champions League in July.”
The early days at Celtic for Ronny were traumatic to say the least and this was caused by the team being not fully prepared for European football at that time. Ronny reflected on this by saying: “We are in a totally different situation to last year in every aspect of what we were trying to do.
“For me, it’s about keeping players, that’s the most important thing. We need consistency as the players here are good enough to get us to the Champions League – that’s what we believe.
“But we want to try to get the squad even stronger and make it even more competitive, so we want some players to go out and some to come in, if they are the right ones.
“But the most important thing is to continue developing the players we have and believe in them, because the same players who were having a hard time, together with the staff and me, at the beginning of the season are still here and doing very well now.
“For me there is still a lot more improvement that can be done with the team and individually in every player as well.”
