RONNY Deila is known to occasionally visit some of the west end of Glasgow’s more classy establishments on his rare days off. The Celtic manager is no hermit and quite right too. Who would begrudge a man a glass of something nice and wet given what he has put up with over recent months?
Pressure comes with this highly paid job, so Deila would not want sympathy. However, he would like to be able to take himself away from it all and decompress.
This is easier said than done in the city he lives in. Deila is public property and he knows it, so finding his own space and time is not easy. “How do I get away from it all? It is very difficult,” Deila said. “You have to have people around you who you can relax with, you need places where you can think, and do the things you need to do to relax. It is important to have enough sleep, eat well – you can see that is not a problem for me – and do physical activity.
“But I am a social guy so it’s not a problem to go out and eat dinner with friends. That is something I enjoy doing. People come over to me and 99 per cent of the time I’ll say yes to pictures and talk to them.
“In this job you have to understand what you’re saying yes to and, when you set foot outside the door, you’re working. So you have to behave and you have to treat people in a good way. I also have to say people have treated me really well in return.
“It is not so easy to go out running because it has been raining for three months. But I have built myself a small gym in the garage and that is a good thing. I have a punching ball to take out my frustrations on. It has a picture of you [the media] on it.”
Deila was joking. Probably.
Speaking before yesterday’s match with Ross County, the Norwegian insisted he now knows better how to deal with what last year he called the “shitstorm” that engulfs Celtic Park after every little stumble. And there have been many of them this season.
Deila said: “It is the same as last year but I am more used to it now. It was much tougher in the first period because I did not know how messy it can be. There are so many things I know now, the players and staff, the circumstances surrounding the club; so it’s much easier to deal with.
“I spoke with Vidar Riseth very briefly about it. I also read Henrik Larsson said that at Celtic you can’t lose three matches in a row or it is a total crisis. He should have said one match.
“[Chief executive] Peter Lawwell said to me that you can never prepare to be a Celtic manager, you have to experience it for yourself. One of my strengths is that I am a quick learner and I am a humble guy who wants to learn and affect all the things that are happening around you.”
Scottish football may have its problems but a lack of passion is not one of them. Indeed, it might be argued that we as a nation are way too passionate and all too often overstep the mark.
Deila said: “Here is not even close to Norway. If you go to a national team match in Norway you get 25,000 people clapping and saying: ‘Go Norway.’ Here it’s all passion. It’s much more intense in everything that happens.”
Aberdeen go to Inverness tomorrow night and then they are at Partick Thistle on Friday. This means Celtic could be second in the Ladbrokes Premiership going into next weekend.
Deila praised the job Derek McInnes has done and is doing at Pittodrie but remains confident that the closest and most unexpected title race in some time will be won by Celtic.
“Aberdeen have done very well,” Deila added. “People say we’ve been bad but that’s not true, we’ve lost three games all season: two to Aberdeen up there, and one bad game against Motherwell at home. They’ve done well though. They’ve only lost four games and that’s a good achievement. But let’s get to April 1 and see what the title race looks like.”
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