5) Ronny Deila is a Nice Guy, and who he appears to be. McCoist has more faces than a Hall of Mirrors, and most of them pretty ugly ones.
Ronny Deila might not have a lot of friends in the media, but no-one in Scottish football actually loathes the man.
Most accept that he is what he appears to be on the surface; a genuine, decent human being with no hidden agendas, no bitchy attitudes, no arrogance and the utmost respect for other people within the game, even those with whom he disagrees.
Ronny is, in fact, too nice for his own good at times.
There are moments when you wish he had more steel, more grit and self-assurance, that quality that some mistake for arrogance but is actually an essential ingredient in the recipe that turns good managers into great ones.
I sometimes get the impression that Ronny is blown around in the wind somewhat, that he doesn’t always fight his, or our, corner as well as he might.
He hasn’t been fully backed by the Celtic board, he’s reversed himself on a lot of his ideas and opinions and this frustrates us most because it’s clear that some of those ideas are good ones.
McCoist has no such issues.
He is very self confident and aggressive in pursuit of his agendas, whatever they might be. He is ruthless to an often horrifying degree, even when it endangers innocent parties as he did with his “demand” for the names of a judicial panel and his nod and wink to the lunatic fringe in his own support.
He just doesn’t combine this with any discernable talent as a football manager.
On the night of The Shame Game at Celtic Park, he was the clear instigator of the incident on the touchline with Neil Lennon; he then hid behind a wall of others and continued to point his fat finger. His press buddies were on hand to make sure the Celtic boss ate the lions share of the aggro for what happened, including his subsequent four match ban, whilst McCoist himself got away clean.
He did things like this all the time he was at Ibrox; one day he would play the role the media so often ascribed to him, that of the Joker and the Cheeky Chappie … on others, he would be a sneering, spiteful pantomime villain, although that’s never how they portrayed him.
In the end, that’s the memory most of us will have of his time in Scottish football; the vindictive thuggish panderer to and provoker of the hate fuelled lynch mob amongst the Sevco support.
When everything is said and done, these two aren’t just different types of manager, they’re from different ends of the evolutionary scale.
One is a cultured, urbane, sophisticate who is as comfortable giving a motivational speech to Future Leaders as he is in the dugout. The other is a poorly educated yobbish ned from Bellshill, who’s sole gifts in life were skill with a football and a smile and line in patter that got him onto the telly.
But whatever looks he had soon faded.
The hair receded.
The belly grew.
The smile died on the lips of a man who realised his own limitations, and lashed out at those who had more to offer and more to look forward to.
Ally hadn’t been in the papers for a while.
It was nice of them to give him something to do yesterday, and a chance to get his face and his name out there again, for future employers in the English or Scottish lower leagues to ponder.
It’s just as well for him that they did.
Because, you know, I’d almost forgotten he existed at all …
