I’m hoping suggestions Stefan Scepovic and Kris Commons are struggling for fitness for Thursday is a classic attempt at European football disinformation.
Back in July I wrote about Commons “dependence on one creative talent feels like an unnecessary vulnerability”. We remain (unnecessarily) dependent on our only creative talent, as subsequent games without him have established. If he’s not in the starting line-up, we’ll need a radical change of system.
Bringing a second creative talent to the club should be a priority. On this subject, I hear Bosnian fulcrum, Semir Stilic, who we were reportedly interested in a few years ago, before he detoured for a indifferent spell in Turkey, is now back in Poland with Wisla Krakow and eclipsing his earlier form for Lech Poznan. We could do worse.
Shocked and stunned at the news Rangers International’s nomad, Daniel Stewart Securities PLC, have had trading in their shares suspended by the Stock Exchange as they were unable to file their accounts to year-end 31 March 2014 on time. The Ibrox club’s board will be incredulous that the diligence they carried out to ensure they were dealing with an advisor of standing overlooked some fundamentals.
Four days out from the Great Scottish Run, which I’m doing for the Foundation’s work for Health, Equality, Learning and Poverty. This is our Foundation, established and run by Celtic fans for 19 years. It’s an important part of the story of where our club came from and what’s important to our mission. Any donations here, from £1 up, are welcome.
Thanks to everyone who has helped.
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For the avoidance of doubt (which I am to blame for due to my early morning post) hugs now just a tad over 9 and a half hours to kickoff.
Turkeybhoy
Did we not lose to MTK Budapest in 1964?
I was on a school cruise at the time, the MS Dunera, and the Master at Arms told us the score.
philbhoy – You want Deila to take over today and win every game 6-0 with immediate effect.
Yes.
It disney work that way.
Walt a disappointment!
I hope Ronny turns out to be a success with Celtic. (thumbsup)
With all that said and agreed wrt fitness and diet, there is still a lot to be had from an appreciation of geometry and physics. South of Tunis quoted Totti on this after the Roma and man city game.
I hope we practice awareness and positioning as well. I watched a documentary on Man U and they have a special lights installed in their in door training pitch. Rooney was told a colour of light to hit as he trapped and turned. Not sure our 3/4 sized park has the same capability.
My Old Dad used to have an engineering business.
He used to buy material from a certain knight many years ago
long before he was a knight.
Sale rep allegedly told him the first thing they did when going to a customer
was see if they had scales and what type at Goods in.
Maybe common practice but sales rep and my dad didnt think so.
mullet and co 2 –
Sure. I have the feeling we’ve been here before.
Ronny needs to start delivering progress. I hope he does. I believe he can. Whether he will is up to him and the players.
If we’re continuing to struggle against mediocre opposition come springtime, it won’t matter how passionately he rails against potato-based foodstuffs, it’ll be goodnight from him.
In the meantime I’m a Ronnysceptic, hoping to be Deilaighted. (thumbsup)
Turkeybhoy.
If I didn’t have a carry out then I’d lift a laddie over, but there were some big laddies in those days.
See Ronny is getting it tight from ex players shame on them at least we expect negative comments from the media who don’t like us but coming from our own supporters is shocking we never learn we seem to feed the media with the intention of ruining the man and some of his coaches to feel sorry for Ronny shouldn’t be subject to all this criticism
Good morning, read the RD interview and am extremely happy he is on the front foot.
like the sound of the plan and I agree with the example of Murray snd Balel did anyone see the recent pics of Bale from 2 years ago ,comparing his physique then to the developed athlete of now?
Anyone here from Alaska?
http://vimeo.com/33914707
funny!
Philvisreturns
“Ronny needs to start delivering progress. I hope he does. I believe he can. Whether he will is up to him and the players.”
– And us too. We as a support need to go through a bit of a transformation as well. Do we want blood and snotters agricultural footballers winning a one horse league or do we want a club finally arriving in the 21st century ?
The latter won’t arrive in straight lines and requires patience. Not something some in our support possess sadly.
OLDTIM67
At Love St in the early 80s I was in the queue for the boys gate wi my mate.
I was 20, he was 22,6’4″ and full beard and moustache.
(The queue was shorter and nearer the pub,btw)
Mounted policeman threw a fella behind us out of the queue for smoking as he had to be over 16 to smoke!
Oooh matron!!
HH!!
Ronny is attempting to bring about an enormous cultural shift in the philosophy of our playing and coaching staff. Most people agree that it will be of great benefit to the club if it is successful. It is going to take time and patience to implement.
If we have the patience, he gets the time.
big wavy – Do we want blood and snotters agricultural footballers winning a one horse league or do we want a club finally arriving in the 21st century ?
Well, I wouldn’t describe Celtic under Neil Lennon, Tony Mowbray, Gordon Strachan or indeed any other Celtic manager in my lifetime as “agricultural”.
But the most important thing in any competition is winning. It doesn’t matter what a manager’s philosophy is if he doesn’t demonstrate winmanship. (thumbsup)
Personally I like what Ronny Deila said but managers should not criticise the players publically.
Swally was roundly laughed at and criticised a few days ago for blaming his players.
Ronny has made the same mistake. WGS praised the players even when they were guff and people scratched their heads. I would wager that in the dressing room he tore them apart.
History has told us that changing too much too soon can back fire. I know what he is saying regarding diet and fitness and agree 100% but he has to do it gradually.
I disagree with criticising the players to the press who are lapping it up.
It’s now up to the players. These are the players that Ronny believes are not fit and not doing what they are told.
Ronny mentioned that he may have to go back to Norway. A shocking admission that he is ready to quit? Depends how you read it. Makes very unpleasant reading on the eve of a big European match. The tickets sold for this evening would point to the fans not buying into it yet. Will the players buy into it?
Ronny promised us fit players and fast attracting football. Bar the United game we haven;t seen it. If anything the team look sluggish and lacklustre.
Ronny has taken a huge gamble with his comments and it is up to the players reaction. History again has told us that if players want a manager out they stop trying. Tonight is a huge marker as to whether the players want to work for this man or not.
Ronny may have signed his P45 with his comments or kicked the team in to action. We will find out soon enough.
LB
livibhoy –
“The secret of being a good manager is to keep the six players who hate you away from the five who are undecided.” – Jock Stein
Publicly expressing frustration with your players is a risk. It could tip the undecideds against you. It might cause them to buck up their ideas. We will see. (thumbsup)
I can understand RD with his fitness and diet regime.
I just hope he understands the support/fans want to see a settled, skilful team on the park, that wins games against lower opposition with a bit of flair.
Hopefully, his tactics will come good with a more settled team…tv tim tonight myself..nightshift and bomb down the road to work after the game.
Gives the hun management no excuses…bedtime…3-1 the hoops.
Bedtime for me,
Good to see Ronny go on the offensive. Players are paid a fortune to play for Celtic. Money beyond most of our dreams. Of course they should behave in a professional manner. Anyone who thinks it’s all right for players to eat the wrong type of food, drink alcohol when they shouldn’t, let the club down with the wrong type of publicity when they are away from the park or to show up for training at the start of the season well out of shape is setting the bar too low for what we should be expecting of Celtic players.
Ronny should ignore any negative comments from our former players. Most of them start to criticise the club from the moment they receive their P45 in the post.
philvisreturns
I agree. I feel that he has taken a huge gamble. Mentioned going back to Norway. Sounds like last throw of the dice for me and he will either chuck it or go to the board and give them a list of players that need emptied.
I read it as follows:
I have been here 3 months and the players are not fit.
I have been here 3 months and they won’t eat and live the way I want them to.
I have been here 3 months and we are not playing the way I want.
I’m afraid that the players not being fit is up to the manager. They should be fit by now. He has had ample time. As for the others that is up to the players. It would appear they are playing for each other not the gaffer.
It’s a very worrying interview for me. Maybe I worry too much. I will be watching very closely tonight. I suspect that there may be a few shock inclusions in the line up tonight. If he is going out to win with the players he believes are living by his standards then so be it. He should not play players he belives are not fit or not living the way he wants. He has laid down his opinion on it now quite forcefully and will look weak if he does otherwise. You would expect most of the men he brought in to start wouldn’t you? When he signed or loaned them in he must have laid out the ground rules and got them to buy into it. Wouldn’t he? I like Ronny and like what he is trying to do. If the players are not doing it though you have a frustrated manager and frustrated players and a half empty ground. It’s not great for the club is it?
The game has taken on a new dimension tonight. I think we will get an indication of whether the players want to play his way and live his way this evening. I am hoping they do but footballers are a funny breed.
LB
TOSB
Great post and totally agree!
Where is this Ronny interview?
JJ
Good morning all.
Thought I had better come on defend myself………..
DD
Canny really find anything wrong wi that. Not difficult to confuse an old git like me. :-)
Boaby
You are, of course correct. No male nurses when I was a nipper. Remembering your not far behind me, how many when you were a nipper? And yes, got my appendix out in the suffering general. So, nothing to defend, it’s all true. Hahaha
DD, see you tonight. Boaby, see you on sunday. :-)))
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
theoriginalsadiesbhoy – I agree with you, but here’s the thing: football players are human beings.
They’re not always the brightest or least impulsive of human beings either.
There’s an art to getting the best out of your players, staff, or employees, and sometimes you have to leave aside the petty issues to concentrate on your larger objective.
The authoritarian style of man management only works when your people buy into it. If not, you need to change the people before your own bosses reach the same conclusion about you. (thumbsup)
Ronny talks the talk.
Will he walk tonight?
I fear he had better.
Does anyone have the link to Ronny’s interview, or even the name of the site please.
Livibhoy
I can see no mention of the players in Ronny’s interviews yesterday except a general observation that they need to become 24 hour athletes if they want to compete at Champions League level.
How that adds up to “a huge gamble with his comments” is a head scratcher.
The manager was taking to the journos, and was providing them with a context to the approach he is applying to the job at Celtic, such explanation necessary because the journos know zip about performance improvement in modern sport.
And neither do the players. That’s why they need managers. Like Ronny Deila.
Over to Ronny to deliver.
Doc
The Sun. I think.
philvisreturns
Agreed. The philosophy is adopted by the club as a whole. Get the youths doing the right things. Eating and living properly and the first team as much as possible. Then over a period you weed out the first team players who are not living by those standards.
He eats and drinks what he wants but gets us 20 goals a season. I have to deal with that until I can replace him. Take small steps. Ban the fizzy drinks is a start. The team go out drinking two nights limit it to one then faze it out. Breathalyse players? Does that happen? Who knows? When players join the club you tell them the ground rules and philosophy. They don;t want to live and work that way then good luck and don’t sign them.
Ronny has the right ideas but I suspect he is putting a wedge between himself and some of our consistent performers from the last few years.
Hope I am proved wrong and we romp it tonight and go on a winning run.
LB
Doc,
It was posted earlier:
http://www.celticquicknews.co.uk/?p=16160&cpage=10#comment-2336546
And of course, one must recognise that the most negative report of Deila’s interview yesterday came from distressed debenture holder Roddy Forsyth, who pops in here from time to time to pick up news of the career of Steve Nicol.
DOC from the hootsman:
Deila has experienced a chequered start to his tenure with the Parkhead club, winning just seven of his first 15 games in charge and failing to guide them into the group stage of the Champions League.
The 39-year-old has introduced new diet and conditioning regimes at Celtic’s training centre in Lennoxtown and has regularly questioned the fitness levels of his players.
That recently provoked a scornful reaction from Deila’s predecessor, Neil Lennon, but Deila is unapologetic. He is adamant that the Celtic squad are fully supportive of his approach which he stresses was sanctioned by major shareholder Dermot Desmond and chief executive Peter Lawwell prior to his appointment in June.
“There are many roads to Rome, but I have to believe in my way,” said Deila ahead of tonight’s Europa League Group D fixture against Croatian champions Dinamo Zagreb at Celtic Park.
“If Celtic or Scotland are not ready for that, then I will go back to Norway. It’s no problem.
“I’m here to do something. I want to make something here. If you don’t do it, then okay, I tried. But I really believe the players are enjoying it and they want to adapt to it. I am so satisfied with their attitude.
“Dermot and Peter are very intelligent. They have seen football for many, many years. They know how to build things. They wanted a change and that’s why I came in. If not, they would have gone for a manager with much more experience and would have done it more like it was done before. It’s a club thing, they are going in a new direction. That’s why I’m here. You have to see from my squad what I was taking over. Some of the players were injured and had operations, some were coming in and were not where they should be.
“When I see the tests they are doing, I see they have a lot to improve. Maybe I see things differently from what Neil was doing. For me, to be professional is to be a 24-hour athlete. If not, then you can go and start working outside football. You can be amateurs again.
“You have to understand that I can’t be stupid when I say things like that and if Neil gets irritated by me saying we can work on how we eat and improve, that’s up to him. If Louis van Gaal was coming in and saying all these things, you would be sitting there nodding your heads. But I come from Norway where you think they are only good at skiing.”
Deila believes his players must aspire to the fitness levels of some of the world’s leading athletes as he attempts to mould them into a side capable of competing successfully in the Champions League every year.
“I really think the Scottish players are open to new things,” added Deila. “Most of the things are not so new, they knew about them already. But are we talking Scotland or are we talking Europe? To win in Scotland, we can still do the same things as before. But to succeed in Europe, you have to adapt to Europe.
“If you tell me that a player can be three or four kilos too heavy and play against Cristiano Ronaldo, then good luck. I get irritated discussing it. You have to understand that the fitness is unbelievable out there. If you see Gareth Bale, that’s Champions League level. So are we not going to try and adapt to that?
“Do you think Andy Murray eats chips? For Andy Murray to win Wimbledon, he did something different to what he did four or five years before. He looks much sharper, much fitter and, if you ask him about that, you will get good answers.
“I have spoken with a lot of good athletes and also looked at a lot of top teams. Everywhere, they are into these things, so I don’t think it is just me. If you went for a trip to Manchester City or Chelsea and saw the professionalism there, I think you would be shocked.
“I want to do something with a big club and you don’t do that in days or weeks. You do it in months or years. You never know when it is the right time or not to take this job. I took over a team who are champions. That’s much better than taking over a team who are bottom of the table.
“Things were being done very well but you have to adapt further. There are always things you can improve. The best athletes and teams are always thinking that, that they have to adapt to do even better.
“It is very hard to do it at a club where the result pressure is so high. You have to do more than just think short term every day. I want to think long term and short term.
“I hope the players question things. We have arguments about a lot of things. But it’s about understanding and talking. People have choices.
“But Celtic is going one way and that is upwards. We are going to develop. If you are going to be into it, you have to make changes yourself. I have to adapt, I have to be a better manager than I was in Norway. I have to learn new things, sacrifice things that I would have done in Norway. It’s the same for my players. They are playing for Celtic, the best club in Scotland, and we are going to compete in the Champions League. You have to make sacrifices for that.
“Nothing shocked me when I came in to the club. The result pressure is unbelievable here and it’s very hard to do something new. You don’t dare to do it because you are afraid to lose. The players also have to adapt to that way of thinking. If you win, everything is okay. If you lose, hell is there.
“But if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t improve. If you always play the same way, you will get the same things. If you don’t want to develop, you will never get anywhere. You will always be the same – boring for a long time.”
Livibhoy
Ronny has the right ideas but I suspect he is putting a wedge between himself and some of our consistent performers from the last few years.
LB
………………………..
Then get rid of them.
Get ghuys in who want to wear the jersey with pride and passion.
Delighted Ronny is going on the front foot…………..
Knowing nothing about football I’m hoping we all see a performance from the bhoys tonight, and better still a favourable result.
……………In ither news
The Herlads piece on the Busted Flush!!!!….( Why The Face!?)
So……………….. the fantastic impresario is “selling” stuff he bought on tick that he couldn’t afford to his “family” to settle some of his…….*cough*…….indebtedness to BOS……..BS.
….and that’s totally normal – matter-of-fact…..guid news, it seems?
After reading that, I’m going into the small windowless office marked WC
and make a large “arms- length” transaction with a well known plumbing firm Shanks and McEwan…………………………
(who may or may not be a creditor of The Busted Flush.)
HH
The Battered Bunnet
He said.
“When I see the tests they are doing, I see they have a lot to improve. Maybe I see things differently from what Neil was doing. For me, to be professional is to be a 24-hour athlete. If not, then you can go and start working outside football. You can be amateurs again.
I think that is pretty clear. He is comparing the players to amatuers is he not?
LB
Livibhoy
Talk about worrying too much, you’re thinking too much :)
Ronny is saying all the right things but he inherited some pampered egos who under Neil were allowed to do more relaxed things let’s say.
As the saying goes we all love innovation but we don’t like change. The players will like the idea that this will make them better (what professional wouldn’t) but the sacrifices and changes they need to make are another matter. That takes something from them that may not exist like professionalism and perseverance.
Ronny is absolutely right in saying if they don’t want to embrace it there is nothing he can do. They make themselves fitter and better, Ronny helps facilitate it.
There’s a terrible tendency this season to make every game a make or breaker.
That’s contrived pressure we could do without.
Philbhoy
Why not do it in the transfer window?
LB
If someone would guarantee me £10,000 PER WEEK for the next 3 years I promise I will train hard, eat properly, stop drinking alcohol and stop having late nights.
What’s the problem with these guys?????
How difficult can it really be????