THERE will be no shortage of time for Celtic to reflect on their failure to reach the Champions League. The meek 90 minutes they produced against Malmo on Tuesday night will be with them for a year now. Their domestic achievements, even a treble, will be dismissed as hollow triumphs due to another aborted attempt to reach the group stage and it would require a run to the final of the Europa League, a feat achieved by Martin O’Neill’s Celtic in 2003 and Walter Smith’s Rangers in 2008, to significantly rebuild their reputation beyond Scotland.
That is the slog that lies ahead for Ronny Deila and he will also have to accept that his own status with supporters may never recover from twice failing to reach the group stage against clubs with less resources than Celtic’s in Maribor and now Malmo. The Norwegian is a genial figure with the media, yet that cannot camouflage his failures.
He’d do well to ditch the Ronny Roar, his fist-pumping salute to Celtic’s support after routine victories in Scotland, for a while and also to tone down the regular, and similarly self-congratulatory, declarations that his side are improving. The evidence of Tuesday night overwhelmingly suggests they are not.
Celtic were bullied in midfield, susceptible to set-pieces, defensively, another supposed strength according to Deila’s propaganda, and lacked quality in attack, where a succession of cheap signings have failed to leave any impression. Markus Rosenborg, Malmo’s captain and centre-forward, had that edge both physically and in his finishing that Celtic have lacked, perhaps since the days of Henrik Larsson and Chris Sutton and certainly since Gary Hooper’s exit.
The saving grace in the aftermath was the honesty. It would have been worse if Celtic had emerged from their dressing-room to peddle the self-delusion you often hear from those who have failed. There were no excuses, no harking back to the first-half goal from Nir Bitton which should have stood but probably wouldn’t have saved them.
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Deila said his side were “scared”, although that was a view several senior players, significantly, dissented from. Scott Brown did admit he was “ashamed” of the performance.
The captain’s contribution was curiously muted for a player who is normally so abrasive, as if he was too conscious of his maintaining his own discipline to lead those around him, and nobody else stepped up to the plate in that respect.
By focusing their signing strategy on players they can develop and then sell, the average age of their starting line-up in Malmo was 25, Celtic have invited that flaw.
They had no Rosenborg leading from the front, no backup to Brown. Although he broadly agrees with the club’s transfer policy, Deila would like to sign a couple of experienced exceptions to it.
“We have to build leaders into the group as well,” he said. “Broony is a fantastic leader but we need more than him, we can’t depend on one. We need more experience and players who take responsibility, but that will come. There’s a lot of prospects within the group who can be leaders.
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“It’s a policy within the club that we bring in players we can develop and be worth more afterwards, but we have to find a balance between experience and youth because you will have a lot of lambs with one shepherd. If you bring kids into the world, you also need parents and that’s the same on the pitch.”
The Scandinavian model that Deila knows well is star players returning to their roots towards the end of their careers, as Larsson did at Helsingborg and Rosenborg has at Malmo. Yet that’s more difficult to achieve with Scots, given the disparity with what they can earn across the border in England. Celtic considered signing Darren Fletcher when he left Manchester United in February, but couldn’t compete with the wages offered by West Bromwich Albion. “It’s a very big challenge,” admitted Deila.
“Darren Fletcher went to West Brom on three times the salary he could get at Celtic. We were talking to every player who has a connection to Celtic, with that type of experience.”
Roy Keane was rather foisted upon Gordon Strachan in the final six months of his distinguished career in 2006 and Deila cautioned against sentimental short-termism. “The experienced players can’t come here and be finished. They have to still have energy and more in them.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re experienced, they have to be hungry to give something back to Celtic, to win more things and improve. Craig Gordon was a fantastic signing and he is hungry.”
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Although he was shouted down afterwards, John Collins, Celtic’s assistant manager, made a good point recently when he said Celtic’s players found it difficult to adjust from the prevailing standard in Scotland, where they are seldom tested, to the one in Europe, where they always are. Perhaps the most salient statistic of the whole Deila debate is that Celtic have conceded 28 goals in 20 European games under him, but only 22 goals in 43 Premiership matches prior to yesterday’s meeting with St Johnstone.
If last season’s Europa League group lacked glamour, then at least Ajax, with their history, and Fenerbahce, with their money, lavished on signings such as Robin van Persie, will provide some when they visit Celtic Park this autumn.
Yet the flip side is that Celtic will find progress to the knockout stage after Christmas, something they managed last year, more difficult to achieve this time round.
If domestic success will not save Deila, a flat campaign in Scotland could finish him. In a recent interview with the BBC, Larsson admitted he “had a chat” with Celtic about the managerial vacancy after Neil Lennon left and before the Norwegian was appointed. Larsson is now managing at Helsingborg, not far from Malmo. “I’m always going to be mentioned when Celtic are looking for a new manager,” he added. Celtic are not looking for a new manager. Not yet.