Deila, Commons and Brown on crumbling to Malmo

Celtic manager Ronny Deila has claimed that his players were ‘scared’ and ‘played with fear’ as his side bowed out of the Champions League after a spineless 2-0 defeat to Malmo.

Goals from Markus Rosenberg and Felipe Carvalho were enough to knock out the Hoops from this season’s Champions League and condemn them to another season in the Europa.

And Deila, speaking to the BBC, believes that the performance put in by his men was an uncharacteristic one of both fear and nervousness.

The hype about the Champions League is big, everybody wants it so badly. You have to deal with it, but we looked very stressed. We didn’t look like we wanted to go out and play football.

We have a lot of young players coming through, but this was a hard lesson for us. We looked very uncomfortable on the ball. We looked frightened and scared, and that is very disappointing.

As his manager claimed that his side were spooked by the occasion, attacking midfielder Kris Commons has shot down that notion, despite the Hoops failing to get a grip on the game at any point.

Former Derby County man Commons, who came on as a second-half substitute for the game at the Swedbank Stadium, stated that the experience of several members of the squad was enough to prove that they weren’t in fear of their opponents.

We have lads that have played in the Champions League, the Europa League, and international football.

This was a big game, but I wouldn’t say there were boys who were scared of the challenge. I don’t think we were playing with fear. I think when you have a one-goal lead, you’re thinking ‘a clean sheet or a draw and you’re through’.

Malmo came in needing goals and came out on the front foot, whereas we were perhaps just trying to do enough to keep a clean sheet.

The defeat left many Celtic fans deflated and discouraged by their team’s lacklustre display, with the Hoops failing to test the gloves of Malmo goalkeeper Johan Wiland at any point throughout the 90 minutes in Sweden.

And Celtic captain Scott Brown slammed the performance of himself and his team-mates, stressing that he was “ashamed” at how Deila’s side went about their business.

I’m ashamed of the performance from all over the park. From the way we defended to the way we attacked – it wasn’t like us at all. We’ve got to put our hands up.

We have high expectations at this club and we need to try to deal with them. It’s a lot of pressure on us but we should have been a lot better than that. The performance wasn’t there. We didn’t look like we were going to score a goal and looked like we’d concede a few.