Is time running out on Deila’s Celtic tenure?

Ronny Deila, yay or nay?

It seems to be a question which has been rearing its ugly head far too often these days.

With Celtic sitting top of the table and in the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup, on paper things may not look too bad.

However, if you ask the fans then you will get some very different answers. The European campaigns under Deila have been nothing short of an embarrassment. The league is and should be a foregone conclusion, and if we don’t win it we are laughing stock of the country. But completing the domestic treble is difficult for any team to do in any country, and is an unrealistic demand.

Deila walked in the door and said: “Judge me in Europe.” Last year after being dumped out of the Champions League playoffs by Malmo, he said: “Judge me at the end of the season.”

I bet you are regretting saying those words Ronny. Yes, he is a young manager, but what he lacks in experience he should surely make up for that his pride and determination to succeed especially at a club as big as Celtic. Instead, Ronny stood on the sidelines in Malmo, looking on to the pitch with his arms folded as if someone had just told him his dog had died.

Where was the manager who would be booting bottles, screaming at players to show him something more? Where was the passion and desire to succeed?

Then he sat down with John Collins and John Kennedy, doing nothing. The three stooges.

If there was a time to go then that was it. Deila must have known from there on in that his cards were marked. After all, he did say that this is where he was to be judged.

Nonetheless, Peter Lawwell stuck by him. He never backed him and give him control to make real change, but he’s stuck by him.

Nothing changed after Malmo. It was the same tactics, the same players and the same drab football being played.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if we train with different tactics through the week then we implement them on a Saturday, we could see different results. I mean, almost all of us reading this have played football, all the way from boys club then for some of us maybe professionally. This is how you progress as a team. You see a problem, then you work on it in order to fix it.

I have done my utmost to support Deila, but he makes it increasingly difficult each week when he sets up the team exactly the same as the last, and then still gets the same end result.

Yes, we are top of the league, but then again that is where we should be. The League Cup semi-final was a joke. Even when Efe got sent off there was plenty of time to change things and get back into the game, but he didn’t do anything.

I dread to think what the season would have been like if we hadn’t had Leigh Griffiths. He came to Parkhead as a boy and this season has proven not only on the pitch but also off it that he now, is a man. If only others showed the grit and determination like Griffiths to turn things around.

Deila has three months to save his job as the Celtic faithful are starting to lose their patience with the Norwegian.

One thing for certain is that Lawwell, the man sitting with the six-figure bonus every year regardless of the result, will not sack Deila at this stage of the season.