Domestic cup competitions have been kind so far to Ronny Deila, more benevolent perhaps than they ultimately were to Neil Lennon.

While cup reverses to Ross County, Kilmarnock, Morton, Hearts and Aberdeen blighted the Northern Irishman's reign at Celtic, Deila not only won the Norwegian Cup at Odd Grenland as a player, but repeated the feat in 2010 as manager of Stromsgodset with a 2-0 victory over minnows Follo.

Suffice to say the Norwegian has had the club's determination to right those wrongs drummed into him since turning up in Glasgow, which means there will be no margin for error when Hearts arrive in the east end of Glasgow for the third round of the League Cup on Wednesday.

"I can assure you I will go 100% to win the League Cup," said Deila. "The goal is to win the triple so of course we are going to take the cup games seriously. It is very important and it is only one game so you can't make any mistakes or you are gone."

Not that there isn't a balance to be struck. In modern football, sustaining a challenge on four fronts requires huge wisdom and judgment in utilising a squad, not to mention well-honed powers of motivation to keep your players hungry. Make too many changes - as Deila has already found to his cost at Inverness this season - or alternatively too little, and it can prove fatal. One case study is skipper Scott Brown, who Deila may be tempted to rest from time to time for his own protection as he feels his way back into first-team action following a hamstring problem. Whether it is more important for the team to have him against Motherwell today or Hearts on Wednesday is anyone's guess.

"That's very tough to answer," said Deila. "We have to think of the bigger perspective and that's why we have a bigger squad. We are considering all the time what is best for Scott. He wants to play all the time. But we are communicating all the time about how we want to do things. I think we agree."

While there was disappointment at throwing away a couple more leads in Europe, Celtic's 2-2 Europa League draw with Red Bull Salzburg in Austria on Thursday night was hardly a disaster. But perhaps the most eye-catching result in the group was Dinamo Zagreb's 5-1 destruction of Romanian side Astra.

Deila admits that the Croats will also provide tough competition. He said: "That was a strong result for Zagreb. I played Astra in the winter with my former club and they are a good team. Everything can happen in one game."

Mubarak Wakaso, whose early goal put Celtic on course for that precious away point, put the result down in part to a pre-match pep talk. "We knew we had to do well because we didn't qualify for the Champions League," the Ghanaian said. "This was the opportunity to do well. We owed it to the fans, the manager, ourselves. This is our work and we had to prove we could do it."