So where did it all go wrong for Ronny Delia? First of all, it didn’t all go wrong. He won two leagues, and if you think it was impossible to lose those, just think back to a team in last season’s Championship, who enjoyed an equally superior income over their competitors, but lost the league to Hearts by the length of the M8.
It was just as possible for Aberdeen to win the league this season or last, as it was Hearts (reeling only months after going into administration) to win the Championship last season. Ronny delivered the primary requirement each season – the league title, but he failed on the second tier requirement – qualify for the Champions League.
Soon after the Legia Warsaw debacles Ronny reflected on the question about whether it was right to ask his new team to adopt his tactics, instead of waiting until he’d recruited players to fit his system.
Two years on we are still remarkably short of players to play his system. Innumerable wide midfield players have come and gone, with many still lingering in the stands. We have an enviable list of creative mids in the squad, yet none have been able to dislodge Stefan Johansen, who by his own admission is having a disappointing season.
Then there’s the striker roles. Leigh Griffiths has been a significant reason why we’ll be crowned champions again over the next few weeks, but he’s pretty much on his own. No one has been able to put pressure on him. For a while Leigh had to wait until John Guidetti and Stefan Scepovic dropped out of the picture, but you’ll struggle to recall this season’s striker arrivals, Carlton Cole and Colin Kazim-Richards, three years from now.
For these reasons, we can say recruitment is where it all went wrong for Ronny. It’s not about 4-2-3-1, half the top teams in Europe play with that formation, nor is it (the now abandoned) zonal marking system, also the dominant top-level defensive system.
We’ve simply recruited the wrong players for creative midfield and striker positions. It’s also subtler than to just say we’ve not recruited good enough players. Some who have escaped Celtic Park after arriving in the last 22 months have done pretty well elsewhere. Guidetti and Scepovic are La Liga strikers, while Jo Inge Berget also made it to the Bernabeu this season.
None of them are great, but I suspect we made them look poorer than they are. Kazim-Richards is unlikely to trouble Sergio Ramos next season, but there’s more to him that what we’ve seen, or will see. We’ve been a place careers diminish disproportionately.
On the positive side, Ronny brought the best out of Leigh Griffiths. He moved the disintegrating Emilio Izaguirre aside for 18-year-old sensation, Kieran Tierney, (the biggest winner on Sunday). And he finally resolved some of the least-organised set-piece defending known to man with the recruitment of Erik Sviatchenko (on this point, you cannot over-estimate the value of adding one good player to a team).
One thought crossed my mind several times this season: If he hadn’t spent so much money fruitlessly trying to make one system work, would he have acknowledge he was on the wrong road and changed tactics?
He backed himself into a corner so stuck with the same faltering policy at Celtic, but surely, surely, if he walks into another job soon, unhindered by that wasteful use of budget, he’d not follow the same tactical strategy which failed him?
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Greenpinata
I am obsessed with Peter Lawwell.
Don’t know the guy, no family connection, just can’t stand the direction he’s taken my beloved Celtic and the encouragement he’s give to them during his tenure. I know we could have done so much better if there was a will at Board level. They were sitting ducks and Pistol Pete couldn’t bear the pull the trigger.
Sorry. “dignity” This thing behaves like some of our players, does what it wants. Apologies
wycombebhoy
That guy that lives in a cave in Spain has forgotten more about Celtic than you will ever know.
And I am not in the minority any more, anyone with half a brain can see what is and has been happening, the scouts are at fault here, but people like you can lay the blame at the door of the coach, the same coach you are saying signed the players and never played them.
And you can believe what you want, more fool you.
HH
Another germane question-
Roy Keane?
Im ernst?
Gotten Himmel.
That’s the grass cut.
For anyone close by, or indeed interested, there’s a debate taking place tonight at Dalziel High School in Motherwell on the OBaF Act beginning at 7pm.
Football Fans Not Criminals.
Greenpinta. Archibald Simpsons, that was a long, long day/ night. Imagine being stuck in and office with Neganon & SidneyTim, well these two would be like extroverts. Good place, plenty Tims go there. This was the guys favourite place, thought I would have to give him a dear John spiel. Great technically gifted individual, who wanted to be onshore, or sobhe thought, it was a living hell for him, he missed the banter offshore, and the 2 weeks home. Alls well that ends well. This encounter was about 6 years ago. Property prices dropping now in Aberdeen I recall in Bridge of Don, Lee Crescent North, late 80s rows of houses,(oil slump) going for £40k, 3 bedroom semis. I retire in Oct. Sold business. Hoping to buy Holiday home in Murcia, spend winter there., on a golf course.
The Exiled Tim :
I could believe you think you know more about Celtic than anyone on the planet.
HH
Are Hunger Memorial badges available on Sunday?
See the funding now reached £4,529 -£471 still needed to attract artists wishing to compete for the commission. Hope it is reached soon. Hh
It’s weird how criticism of the way Celtic is run is itself criticised for being “un-Celtic”.
These were precisely the terms and methods used by the Whytes and Kellys (“it’s not the Celtic way…”) when we all wondered just what the hell they were doing.
Ronny is not a wee boy, neither is Peter, and football is a tough results-driven business. The multiple failures stacked up over several seasons now are worrying. Not to criticise this multiplying failure is negligent on our part, IMHO.
There’s always blame to go around when we fail, from PL to RD to JP…and all inbetween and above but seems to me that some can only see PL and the board .
wycombebhoy
Go away and annoy someone else
AN TEACH SOLAIS on 21ST APRIL 2016 5:09 PM
I’ll be selling them on Sunday at CQN corner mate.
HAMILTONTIM on 21ST APRIL 2016 5:06 PM
That’s the grass cut.
Snap………………….and………………………the grape vines pruned.
Have a good meeting -))
Burgas
Eh, aye, the grapes are next :-)
The grapes are being ignored this evening for the apples
Cider of course.
People
It all went wrong for Ronny the moment he accepted a job that was clearly beyond him. He was initially contacted about being an assistant to someone, but through circumstances out with his control, ended up as the main man.
Now we have seen very little evidence to suggest that we are either fitter or more tactically astute, which suggests that his coaching ain’t very good and we have seen plenty of evidence to suggest that his managerial skills are pretty poor.
No doubt he was very flattered by being offered the job and like Lenny before him, probably believed that if he knocked it back, he would never get another chance. However as an intelligent guy he should have realised that he was miles out of his depth at a club our size and with the demands that go along with that!
Like many I wanted rid of him after the horrendous European debacle this season, so I won’t now say that I’m sorry he’s going. The bigger problem remains. Those who appointed him are still in the building and they should be asked pertinent questions and hopefully removed from appointing his successor!
Sunday might turn out to be a blessing in disguise if it means that DD finally realised how badly things have been handled over the last 3/4 years!
Not holding my breath on that one!
The next guy has to be the real deal. That means no more projects, no more punts on cheap foreign sounding guys just because they are foreign sounding!
This is probably the biggest decision DD will have to take in his time at the club. If he gets it wrong again, then we could be in real trouble!
However the manager’s job is only one of the many things that need sorted this summer. The board really need to make significant efforts to get the support back on side.
The means aggressively fighting our corner, no more sitting at he back of the bus, as one of them once said!
Start to come out publically pursuing Res 12 , calling out the whole SFA corruption scam and nailing the new club for exactly what they are- a new club!
DD is kidding himself if he thinks a new manager and couple of players will solve everything!
HH
If scotrail ever manage to get me home that is-((
Auld Bertie
If you are thinking about buying a holiday home for the golf, you really should consider Santa Clara Golf Granada, there are hundreds of empty houses in the complex, most are owned by Barclays Bank and are going for a song, they would be way less than half what you will pay close to Murcia, mate got one a few months back, 68 K euros, the golf course is the best I have played on in Spain, and it’s nearly always empty.
Can’t do any harm to look.
HH
IMHO Fair criticism is always acceptable and people take posts of responsibility knowing that lack of success or, indeed, total failure will be criticised.
Character assassination, near demonisation, IMHO, is not acceptable.
What people say in pubs tends to stay in pubs. What is put out on a publicly accessible blog is a different kettle of stinking fish..
The man is leaving. There is no need to be running after him yelling
Insults. Displays of visceral hatred also damages the one doing the hating.
(Again, in MMHO) HH
TET
Whit dae you know ?
You live in a cave.☘☘
PLbelly,
Lawwell needs to go now as well. To have him anywhere near the selection of a new manager would make the appointment null and void. Lawwell engineered a yes man and puppet in place last time to ensure he had complete control. Lawwell puts his interests before Celtics interests especially in selection of a manager.
Lawwell persevered with RD for a season longer than he should have. He even supported him at the AGM. He could have binned him in the January transfer window. He continued with a lame duck because it suited his agenda.
If Celtic want to then the page and engage with the fans Lawwell must go too. He has driven the club into the ground when there was no opposition. He will be rewarded with his catastrophic failure with another £1M taking his Celtic loot to £10.6M. Surely that is enough to keep the driveway warm during the winter. If he had a shred if decency his bonus should go to those employees he shafted on the living wage.
The search for a new manager is meaningless until Lawwell leaves the building.
BT
That’s what I said, I have forgotten :-)
HH
HT
“That’s the grass cut.”
Hope you made her a cup of tea after she cut the grass!
Just spent a few hours with Paul and a Celtic legend, Paul McStay.
Paul has agreed to come on the blog and I will organise that with him over the next few weeks.
He also signed the Celtic strip from 1967 which has already been autographed by Willie Wallace, Tommy Gemmell, Yogi Hughes and Charlie Gallagher.
Talking of Charlie he will be on CQN next week and his book is due back from the printers around that time. Get your autographed copy at http://www.cqnbookstore.com
Paul McStay’s autobiography is called Maestro and will be out in early November.
ITALIABHOY on 21ST APRIL 2016 1:10 PM
Paul67,
Is it possible, just possible that where it all went wrong for Ronny was “Peter Lawwell”?
I really think proper analysis of this question cannot stop at whether a striker was any good or not. It must look at the club’s general downward trajectory over a good half-decade or so, only a small part of which Ronny can be blamed for.
It seems blindingly obvious that Celtic FC is beset with quite serious structural problems at executive and administrative level, and unless these are addressed, you’ll simply be writing the same article in 2 years’ time, with Ronny’s name replaced by that of another poor sap.
PS – “he won 2 leagues”. Erm, not yet he’s not!
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Thank you ItaliaBhoy. Your analysis speaks my mind exactly, and I trust you will not mind me posting it again.
I hope the “next poor sap has the hawmaws to show a number of our pampered millionaires the door at least.
I will also add that I am not on the fence, I have decided to keep my money in my pocket for the time being. I have also unsubscribed to Celtic’s marketing emails.
I have written two considered letters that will shortly be winging their way to Paradise. Will they be read? Will anyone even care?
Lawwell has not announced anything on Kennedy and Collins. If we drop points against Ross County and Aberdeen win Ronny will be relieved off first team duties with immediate effect. Collins and Kennedy will step in.
Lawwell will also be workin on a plan b scenario until the end of the season in case it starts to go pear shaped in the run in.
Asleep at the wheel big time Pedro.
Just heard Warburton talking very well of our manager. (I know he already called him “disrespectful.) He let the media know they had treated Ronnie disgracefully. Why does our Club not do the same? If what holds us back is some contracts, then the sooner we end them the better. We are never going to change their anti-Celtic agenda. We play in Scotland; it plays to Scotland’s unacknowedged shame- institutionalised sectarianism.
If lawell goes ,they will just replace him ,with somebody similar, The coach I mentioned names,but according to some on here,they are not good enough, I know one thing they the Celtic Board,need to get there act together very soon,and not leave it to the last minute,and please no Lennon,
Chris Coleman
TGCW
No but I did put the kettle on to be fair!
FOURSTONECOPPI on 21ST APRIL 2016 5:36 PM
Chris Coleman
Is he they guy fae different strokes
Love
WC
Someone told me that Paul MC Stay was seeking £50k before releasing the book
Can you explain that process please ?
Coleman widny cut the mustard.
TIMBHOY3 on 21ST APRIL 2016 5:32 PM
If lawell goes ,they will just replace him ,with somebody similar,
###
I don’t think so.
If Peter Lawwell is mutually consented it will be because The Great Desmondo has decided to try a different approach.
Coleman would just be the next sap to get ‘ the bag’
:-)
“Eh, aye, the grapes are next”
HT,
Germaloids will do it.
:)
HH
THE SPIRIT OF ARTHUR LEE on 21ST APRIL 2016 5:41 PM
FOURSTONECOPPI on 21ST APRIL 2016 5:36 PM
Chris Coleman
Is he they guy fae different strokes
Love
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Is that the programme where a rich white guy and his princess daughter live in a 10-bedroom mansion and acquire 2 black kids for entertainment and shove them both in a cupboard with a bunk bed?
Natknow,
What you talking about?