If Deila Falls He Won’t Fall Alone

There’s a general feeling at the moment that our club is treading water, that people in it and around it are marking time, that change is in the wind and that we’re going to part company with the manager at the end of the season.

I don’t know whether it’s true or not.

I have a view on it, and it’s that I hope he leaves us for a more forgiving environment than this one.

I’ve got nothing against the guy on a personal level; none of us do, and I resent the implication.

I also resent the idea that we’ve arrived here via the media.

Before I say another word, I want to nail that one shut.

It’s offensive. It implies that the critics of the strategy are easily led idiots, which is bad enough without the additional implication that goes with that; that the likes of Keith Jackson can influence our thinking and guide us towards a conclusion.

The day I need guidance from someone who still thinks Dave King is an honourable man … please, call the fun factory and tell them to get my room ready.

I supported Ronny Deila’s appointment. I was cheering it when the media was writing its first negative articles. I don’t need them to steer me; I can see full well that things are wrong, badly wrong. This time last year we were in the Europa League knockout stages and the League Cup Final.

Today we’re in neither. Europe was an epochal disaster and I knew we were out of the League Cup the minute Ambrose was shown the red card, with the score still at 1-0 Celtic.

If Ronny Deila does go, many will view it as a verdict on the manager and the manager alone.

I will not be one of those people.

As I said, I supported the choice when it was made, because it looked radical and different and a step in a fresh direction.

People told me it was evidence of downsizing. I refused that hypothesis because it seemed like such a revolutionary step. I really did believe that people inside the club had radically altered course.

But it now seems clear to me that Ronny was brought in because he was willing to work in a greatly restricted environment. I don’t hold that against him at all; how many of us, if we were managers, would have turned down the Celtic job, even knowing that?

As such, those who talk about having faith in Ronny and his project are missing the point.

Ronny can’t be judged on that basis because it’s not strictly his project we’re seeing unfold here. He was brought in because he was willing to work on someone else’s vision … and that’s one of many reasons that, angry as I am with the stagnation of our club, that I do not believe we will get better simply by removing the man in the manager’s office.

He was not brought to Celtic to reshape our club as he saw fit.

He was not appointed to make policy; he was brought to be the instrument of it, and we saw the evidence of that on his very first day in the job when he had John Collins imposed on him by the CEO.

The strategy was already laid out.

He simply works within the parameters of it.

That is a crucial point, and we need to understand what it means.

We do the manager a grave dis-service by failing to think through the implications of that.

If Ronny falls, he can’t be allowed to fall alone.

The Strategy that he was brought to Celtic Park to work with has to fall with him, because it’s truly the cause of our colossal fall from being a club that took on, and beat, Barcelona to the shambling mess we are today.

Some of this is down to Ronny.

You can’t excuse the way in which our attacking midfield department is hopelessly bloated whilst we’re bringing in wide players on loan; the 4-2-3-1 system is his most obvious contribution to our development and he hasn’t got the players to fit into it yet, after three transfer windows.

That’s unforgivable and can’t be ignored.

The defensive midfield position, another key area on whose success that formation rests when played right, is also empty, and that, too, is a joke. The total absence of a solution to a problem that has Callum McGregor played so hopelessly out of position … there’s just no justification for it, and I defy anybody to even try one out.

We have one proven goal-scorer at Celtic Park at the moment too, and that’s another unbelievable problem of our own making, and the worst of that is that you genuinely do get the impression that Ronny lucked out on Griffiths, a player he initially didn’t appear to rate at all.

Had things gone a little differently last season he would have been released and God knows what state we would be in as a club at the present time.

I believe we’d have a different manager, for starters.

But Ronny can only work with the tools he’s given, and the failures at Celtic are widespread and rooted in the blunt truth that we refuse to pay the going rate for proven quality, even when it is available to us, as it was with, dare I say it, Gary Hooper to name just one example, and one there’s no excuse for people inside Parkhead not being well aware of as he was playing here not that far back in our memory.

Sheffield Wednesday? I mean, seriously?

According to our website, including players out on loan, we now have a first team squad of 40.

That’s an absurdity, especially when so many are sub-standard.

There are too many “projects” amongst that number, for a start.

That needs to be cut by at least ten, and ultimately we should be aiming for a settled 25 man squad of 18 top players, on good salaries (the sticking point, as well I know) and long term deals, augmented by the best young footballers we can find, who’s jobs will be to become the first team guaranteed starters of the future.

The absence of any real strategic approach to player recruitment beyond “buy cheap, develop and sell” means all of that is pie in the sky.

When we’ve been on the verge of it, as I would suggest we were when Lenny masterminded that win over the Catalans, it’s been quickly torn down and we found ourselves back at zero.

I don’t believe we ever seriously tried to keep the likes of Wanyama and Van Dijk.

I don’t believe retaining them and moulding a squad around them was ever part of the plan, and the Dutchman especially arrived at Celtic Park knowing that full well; he was, allegedly, sold on the idea of coming in and using our club as a stepping stone to “better things.”

At Southampton, presumably.

When did we become that?

When did we become a “stepping stone”?

Why aren’t players signed on the basis that they’re coming in to form the nucleus of a side that’s going to dominate domestically, but with an eye ever on our progressing in Europe?

The way our club functions – at every level – has to be examined.

If our board was truly on the ball, and determined to take us forward, they would conduct a Strategic Review to overhaul the way everything at Parkhead works at the present time.

Our scouting system would be radically changed for a start.

Its successes are well known, but its failures have cost us more than just transfer fees. They’ve weighted us down with mediocre players who have contributed to the loss of millions more in European exits, and that’s just in the past two years.

The CEO has been at the club too long for any good he’s doing now.

How can a guy appointed a decade ago claim to bring fresh ideas to the table?

He clearly doesn’t and can’t, because his thinking won’t adapt past slashing and burning to save as much as possible.

Too many of his public statements are at odds with reality; he said when Rangers crashed and burned that their demise didn’t change our operating strategy one bit; that was clearly nonsense when he said it because, of course, the idea is an absurdity.

Of course it changed the strategy.

It had to.

Too much of our commercial operation was built on the rivalry. Had we seriously adapted ourselves these past four years, to life without them I would be less concerned. But of course, we didn’t. Because the job was left half done, and we knew that a club playing out of Ibrox would eventually be back.

It’s a well-known fact that the club has spent that time treading water, and can’t wait to rebuild that rivalry again, only around the club that calls itself Sevco.

I no longer kid myself about that, and I don’t expect “fresh ideas” and a new vision from people who can’t break a dependence cycle like that, even one that held us back for decades and might eventually kill us.

That people haven’t grasped, by now, that the “Old Firm” tag ties us, irrevocably, to a damaged club supported, in part, by horror movie goons … this is going to haunt us way into the future, and is what stopped England from taking us twenty years ago.

Our manager gets his share of stick on here and elsewhere, but I have never held him solely accountable for the things that are wrong at Celtic Park.

The blame for much of this lies way over his head.

Let no-one say that if he goes he should be last out the door.