IT is an irony probably not lost on him that the commodity Ronny Deila craves most of all is the thing that will likely run out before anything else.

At various points during his relatively short tenure as Celtic manager, Deila has spoken about the importance of time and the need to be given enough of it to ensure he can do the job properly.

He said as much when he was appointed as Neil Lennon's successor in June and has repeated the mantra after every subsequent setback. Only recently he made the reasonable point that, had the Celtic board wanted someone who would improve things immediately, they would have had hired a bigger name with far greater experience.

When you choose to employ a then 38-year-old whose only previous managerial experience was with a relatively small club in Norway, then there is presumably an understanding that he will not remedy matters overnight.

They gave Deila time at Stromsgodset. He graduated from player-coach to manager in 2008 and spent the next two years battling against relegation. Gradually, however, he turned things around.

He brought in his own players, imparted his own ideas, worked on his philosophy. Stromsgodset won the Norwegian Cup and then their first league title in 43 years. The club's directors were vindicated for standing by Deila during the turbulent times and eventually reaped the rewards for their patience. They saw what he was trying to do and gave him enough time to make it work.

Deila wants to emulate that blueprint here but the goalposts have moved. Celtic is a much bigger club than Stromsgodset with greater demands and expectations. Patience is in shorter supply, too. A struggling manager saying he needs more time can sometimes sound like a desperate man on death row pleading for clemency from the prison governor. Celtic supporters see their side languishing in sixth place in a one-team league, and a manager presiding over the worst record after eight games since Jozef Venglos in 1998. As Deila is quickly learning, a Celtic manager cannot plan for the long term without also taking care of short and medium-term concerns as well.

In Norway, though, he remains a hugely respected figure. Those who know Deila well have retained faith in his abilities as a manager, and believe he will prove to be a shrewd appointment by Celtic. The same phrase, however, keeps cropping up in conversation: give him time.

Adam Kwarasey was just 22 years old when Deila elected to make him his first-choice goalkeeper in 2010. The Ghanaian internationalist would go on to become his captain when they won the title last year and remains in touch with the man he considers his mentor. There is praise for the transformation Deila oversaw as he rebuilt Stromsgodset.

"Ronny means a lot to me as he gave me my chance," he told Herald Sport. "He let me fail many times before I became the goalkeeper I am today. It's kind of sad to see him struggle right now but it was the same thing at first here in Norway.

"We had some problems at the start but then it only went one way after that. He changed a lot of things. We went from being one of the oldest teams in the league to become one of the youngest. With the younger players he could work how he wanted and they would follow his ideas.

"For many of us it was the first coach who believed in us or gave us our chance so we would listen to him. He is good with people and can get the best out of them. It's not for me to say what Celtic should do but if it were up to me I would give him time."

There is an acknowledgement from Kwarasey, however, that simply copying everything that Deila did in his native land may not work at Celtic, especially with a squad of older or more experienced figures.

"Celtic is a bigger club and they expect success right away," added Kwarasey, an international team-mate of new Celtic loanee Wakaso Mubarak. "Now Ronny has a lot of players with international experience and who have maybe won the Scottish league a few times and played in the Champions League. That maybe makes it more difficult to sell what he wants to the group. He has huge potential but he doesn't know everything. He still needs to develop and space to grow."

Deila appears so headstrong and confident that it is sometimes easy to forget both his youth and the fact this is his first venture overseas. Andre Bergdolmo, a 63-time capped Norwegian internationalist, arrived at Stromsgodset in 2007 for the final post of a peripatetic career that had previously taken in stops at Rosenborg, Ajax, Borussia Dortmund and FC Copenhagen.

His final year as a professional coincided with Deila's first tenative steps as a coach and, despite being three years his senior, Bergdolmo was impressed with how his team-mate handled the step up. He has continued to follow Deila's progress both as a pundit for Norwegian television as well a fledgling manager himself, and like Kwarasey, Bergdolmo again preached the importance of Deila being given time to make it all work.

"When he first started out, after a few months Stromsgodset was in 10th place but still the directors signed him up for another two years," he said. "They believed in Ronny. They didn't get stressed because they were confident he knew what he was doing. If I was the chairman of Celtic I wouldn't rush things. They could buy players and have instant success. But Ronny wants to build things and create a team. That is his way. I hope he gets enough time to make it happen."