Barry Kearney | Contributing Writer
It can safely be said that the honeymoon period for Ronny Deila is certainly over, as Celtic currently languish mid-table in the SPFL and recently became the only club in the history of the Champions League to be knocked out twice before the tournament even began. The fans have already asserted their discontent with the performances of the club, highlighting Deila’s tactics and transfer policies as particularly undesirable.
However, it has also been argued that the club’s continued decline is down to the transfer strategy that has been enforced by the club’s board. A policy that has seen Celtic’s most successful players be sold onto other clubs for substantial fees, with only a fraction of that being reinvested in the club’s first team squad. The result of this has been the downsizing of the Celtic team, to a point where the squad that lost to Hamilton Accies had 5 loanees and a free transfer.
The success that Celtic were achieving at home and abroad was coinciding with the decline of Rangers Football Club. Celtic’s fiercest rivals had entered the liquidation process and re-emerged as a new company in the fourth tier of Scottish football.
To put into context the depth to which Celtic have downsized we will need to first look at the swift demise of the club’s performance in Europe, perhaps the greatest and most ruthless test of a team’s quality. The 2012/2013 season was the first journey into the Champions League for Celtic under the management of Neil Lennon. Celtic’s first team had a particularly strong spine. In the heart of goals was Fraser Forster, protected by the central defensive partnership of Kelvin Wilson and Efe Ambrose, who provided a solid base for the midfield to build from.
The relationship between Scott Brown and Victor Wanyama contributed a powerful core to the side, with Gary Hooper offering a clinical edge to the team in attack. These individuals would contribute to a side that would conquer the Catalan Giants; Barcelona and qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League for only the third time in Celtic’s history.
The success that Celtic were achieving at home and abroad was coinciding with the decline of Rangers Football Club. Celtic’s fiercest rivals had entered the liquidation process and re-emerged as a new company in the fourth tier of Scottish football. The departure of Rangers offered Celtic an opportunity to focus on European football, safe in the knowledge that the domestic league would take care of itself.
This domestic freedom would allow the Celtic board and manager to invest in a varied number of interests that could bring a strong financial basis allowing them to dominate Scottish football for long after Rangers’ return to top flight football. However, on the evidence of the following two summer transfer windows, it would seem that the club is moving backwards, not forwards.
The summer of 2013 would see Celtic sell much of the spine of the their side that carried them through to the knockout stages of the Champions league. Gary Hooper was sold to Norwich city for a reported £5.5M, his replacement would be Teemu Pukki for £2.6M. Victor Wanyama was sold to Southampton for £12.5, in his place was Nir Biton signed for £700,000. Virgil Van Djik was Celtic’s most successful transaction of the summer, signed for £2.6M, filling the hole left behind by Kelvin Wilson who left for a similar price. Over the course of that season Celtic made a net profit of £10.4M from transfers alone when all transactions are taken into account.
This looks yet again to be another year of transition, not just for Celtic, but also for Ronny Deila. He comes across as a young manager, enthusiastically looking to implement long term goals. In the short term, however, fans want results.
The results in Europe reflected this lack of investment; Celtic avoided an embarrassing early exit in the Champions League qualifying stages, overcoming a two goal deficit to Shakhter Karagandy, winning by three goals at Park Head. This was to be the last European win at home for almost 14 months. Celtic finished bottom of their group, losing 5 matches and suffering a debilitating 6-1 defeat at the hands of Barcelona. The club would finish the season as domestic champions, but would lose their manager within weeks of the season’s end.
The summer of 2014 saw Celtic welcome the arrival of Ronny Deila as their new manager. Deila’s first responsibility was to oversee the sale of the club’s most prized asset, that of Fraser Forster, a World Cup International for England. Celtic would receive £10M from this transaction, the following few weeks would see the club go on to sign five players on loan. This was a continuation of the club’s transfer policy from the 2013 season, the selling off of the clubs most valuable players, whilst replacing them with young, often out-of-favour rookies.
The Green brigade are a ruthless bunch, seemingly uninterested in balance for now. They’re just not in the mood, baby.
This looks yet again to be another year of transition, not just for Celtic, but also for Ronny Deila. He comes across as a young manager, enthusiastically looking to implement long term goals. In the short term, however, fans want results. The performances so far have been well below par, defeats to Legia Warsaw, Maribor, Inverness and most recently Hamilton has put Ronny Deila in a precarious position, however, it is unlikely that the sack looms. If Deila is sent packing after 6 months, it looks like Ronny’s made too many mistakes. If Deila is sacked after 6 weeks it looks like the Celtic board’s made a mistake in his appointment.
With former Celtic stars like John Hartson publicly lambasting Deila as ‘clueless’, that eventuality of the sack teeters on the precipice of inevitability. Celtic could strike a happy balance with another season of domestic domination, whilst also putting in a respectable performance in the Europa League. However, the Green brigade are a ruthless bunch, seemingly uninterested in balance for now. They’re just not in the mood, baby.
