Deila: Players Showed Fight

Celtic manager Ronny Deila praised his side’s battling spirit after an impressive 2-2 draw at the Amsterdam ArenA against Ajax, reports the BBC.

Celtic twice took the lead thanks to first-half goals by Nir Bitton and Mikael Lustig, but the Dutch side fought back twice through Viktor Fischer and Lasse Schone strikes, the latter coming after Emilio Izaguirre as sent off for the visitors.

The result was a welcome boost for Deila as his side had been under pressure throughout the week after Saturday’s defeat at Pittodrie, and the Norwegian said the players showed fight in a difficult Group A Europa League clash.

The boys showed me today that they really want to fight. We played well, we created chances and we defended as a team. We had a great attitude, and I’m very, very proud of the boys.

When we go down to 10 men, we get difficulties and we get more crosses into the box and had to deal with that. In the end, if we see the whole game, a draw is OK and it’s a very important point.

With the Hoops in cruise control heading into the final 15 minutes 2-1 ahead, fingers will be pointed at Izaguirre for what was a needless challenge on El Ghazi, as the Honduran saw a second yellow card which put his side under pressure for the rest of the game.

But Deila refused to blame the left-back for the loss of a late goal, whilst acknowledging that it did change the course of the game.

Of course it changed the game, we had very good control before the red card. I personally feel he played very well up until that red card. Emilio has no record of having a lot of red cards.

The clash in Amsterdam saw the reintroduction to the side of attacking midfielder Kris Commons, who had yet to feature regularly for Deila this season.

The Scottish international set up both goals in what was a statement of intent from the former Derby County man.

And Deila heaped more praise on Commons as he expressed sympathy over the midfielder’s run of injuries in recent weeks.

Kris creates things. He is a very good football player. He has been very unlucky this year with injuries and he hasn’t started many games.

Everybody knows that we can play good football and we are a good football team, but today we needed a performance and we needed some confidence through performances, and if you can back up that with points, it makes it much easier.