Ronny Deila says he wants to offer Kris Commons a coaching role as part of the new contract on offer to the forward. Maybe he knows theres likely to be a vacancy soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a good dialogue now about this and that is going forward all\u00a0<\/em>the time.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cKris wants to stay and we want to keep him and that is what\u2019s most important so things will be arranged.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe also have to be happy he wants to stay.\u201c\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Commons has been asking for his new deal since last christmas, so he probably does want to stay, however , things may have changed since then. He’s been linked with a number of sides in the English midlands, but that could be just to force Celtics hand. If the stories are true that he’s been offered a wage cut, its another piece of history for the club, as I’m fairly sure that no other club has given its top scorer a drop in wages. Given the deal that was on offer to Georgios Samaras, it would come as no surprise, and this is probably the main reason no top player would want to come to Glasgow.<\/p>\n They do talk amongst themselves, you know. Probably in single syllable words, but they talk nonetheless.<\/p>\n Another ex-player who has been talking is Roy Keane. He’s got a new book out, and in it he talks of the offer made to him by Dermot Desmond to become Celtic manager;<\/p>\n \u2018I got a call: would I go and have a chat with Dermot Desmond? I\u2019d met him once before, in 2005, when I was signing to play for Celtic.<\/span><\/em> \u2018I asked Paul Gilroy, the League Managers\u2019 Association lawyer, to speak to Celtic to discuss terms. Money hadn\u2019t been mentioned yet. \u2018Had Celtic shown enough in their negotiating, ‘we\u2019ll move this, you can take that’ \u2014 a bit of give and take \u2014 I might have hesitated.<\/span><\/em> \u00a0Whether or not Keane is telling the complete truth, only he knows, but its interesting that he didn’t get to choose his number two, in much the same way that Deila never got to choose his. Its almost like the board wanted their own man in there, probably to keep an eye on the manager.<\/p>\n \u00a0Which is reminiscent of the old board and their efforts to break the Stein Fallon partnership when Davie MacParland got the assistants job, which had the internet been around at the time, would have been much more of an issue. Instead, all we had was the Celtic View, and the title of that paper tells you prety much what was going to be in it. And some pictures of dogs in the hoops.<\/p>\n \u00a0While Ronny is proving not to be up to the job in a number of ways, the hidden hand behind the scenes needs to have its knuckles rapped as well.<\/p>\n \u00a0Its not right for them to continually point across the city and tell us that we don’t want to go down that road, but in reality its like locking yourself in the cellar because your neighbour has the flu. There was never any chance that Celtic would follow the path laid down by the now defunct Rangers, simply because what happened to them they brought upon themselves with reckless financial behaviour, aided and abetted by a compliant bank manager.<\/p>\n \u00a0Lets face it, that would never be on offer to any Celtic owners.<\/p>\n \u00a0The fiscal prudence at the moment may well be the right way to do things, especially with the new financial fair play rules, but you can sometimes overcook the meat.<\/p>\n The bookies are already taking bets on the name of the man to succeed Ronny Deila, when he eventually becomes the fall guy for the arse Lawwell has made of this season. Owen Coyle, Jackie MacNamara and Steve Clarke are joint favourites at 4\/1, while Henrik Larsson is out at twelves, along with Roy Keane and Derek MacInnes.<\/p>\n \u00a0Davie Moyes is 8\/1, and won’t consider the post until he sorts out his contractual issues with Manchester Utd, where he was the fall guy for the boards failure to invest in an aging team.<\/p>\n \u00a0Moyes would be reluctant to get involved with another board that would insist on controlling him.<\/p>\n \u00a0Therein lies the real problem at Celtic. Peter Lawwell , John Park and probably one or two others are involved in a game of FIFA Football Manager, or whatever its called, picking the players, setting the wages, and more importantly, making decisions for the manager.<\/p>\n \u00a0Deila is at fault here. You only get your own way in the first few weeks of any new job. He should have insisted on total control, including the appointment of his number two. By giving way on that point, he has become a coach, and not a manager. Perhaps that is the main reason why the players don’t appear to respect him.<\/p>\n \u00a0Casting our minds back to when Martin O’ Neill was appointed, one of the first things he did was arrange for the players wives to sit together at the games. A small point, but one that showed the players that he had their best interests at heart, and would fight to get something done for them.<\/p>\n \u00a0Footballers are simple creatures, and after that, O’Neill would have been able to ask for that little bit extra from them, and as history shows, he got it.<\/p>\n \u00a0Celtic isn’t quite at the crossroads yet, but the time is approaching when a decision will have to be made to either back Deila, or sack him. If its the former, then the new man must insist on complete control of football matters, otherwise we’ll be in the same boat facing the same rough seas a few months down the line.<\/p>\n \u00a0If we decide to stick with him, then lets remember he is paid to manage the team, and Lawwell, Park et al need to step aside and allow him to do that.<\/p>\n \u00a0It would send out all the wrong messages if Deila was to be sacked without ever being allowed to truly show us what he can do, no matter how that turns out. If he is to fail, then at least let him be the architect of his own failure.<\/p>\n \u00a0Mind you, we could argue that his inability to stamp his authority over the board is his own fault, and a sign that he isn’t up to the job in itself.<\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ronny Deila says he wants to offer Kris Commons a coaching role as part of the new contract on offer to the forward. Maybe he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/ronny-3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-1v2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5769,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5768\/revisions\/5769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2018I met him for a cup of tea. It was in the middle of an international week, in Dublin.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018At the end of the chat, he said: ‘The job is yours’.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018It was all pretty straightforward. There would be one or two restrictions, about staff. They had already picked the man who would be my assistant and they were insisting on him.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018It didn\u2019t scare me off but it did get me thinking. It wasn\u2019t an ideal start. Were they doubting me already?<\/span><\/em>
\u2018I came back to the team hotel and spoke to Martin (O\u2019Neill). I told him I would have a think about it.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018We (the Republic of Ireland) had a game against Italy at Craven Cottage in London on the following Saturday.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018The fact I had spoken to Dermot Desmond had become public knowledge.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018It had to, because Martin had a press conference and a few things had been leaked \u2014 as usual.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018I was delighted. It was a massive compliment. Over the years, I had always said: \u201cIf you\u2019re offered the Celtic job, you don\u2019t turn it down\u201d.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018I was in a predicament …and my gut feeling was saying: ‘You\u2019re on your own with this one’.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
\u2018I got in touch with Celtic\u2019s chief executive, Peter Lawwell and asked him to give me a ballpark figure before negotiations got going.
\u2018He mentioned a figure and he said: ‘But that\u2019s it’. Paul told me there were a lot of clauses in the contract that he wasn\u2019t happy with. And the figures were non-negotiable.
\u2018I got my head around that. But it felt a bit too familiar. I had been down this road before when I signed for Celtic as a player.
\u2018I felt they wanted me but they weren\u2019t showing how much they wanted me.
\u2018We played Italy on the Saturday and I had a message on my phone on Sunday from Dermot Desmond.
<\/span>\u2018They wanted a heads-up by tomorrow, Monday.I thought about the Celtic offer. It wasn\u2019t rocking my boat.<\/span>
<\/span>\u2018They weren\u2019t convincing me: ‘Listen, you\u2019re the man for us’.<\/span>
\u2018I went to Paul Gilroy\u2019s house (on Sunday night). There were things I wasn\u2019t happy with in the contract. But I know if you examined every clause too carefully, you would never sign anything.
\u2018I rang Dermot Desmond on the Monday and said: ‘I\u2019m really honoured you offered me the job but I want to stay with Martin’.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
\u2018They just didn\u2019t show me that they wanted me and I was happier staying in the Ireland job.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018Working with Martin had given me back a love of the game and I\u2019m all for showing a bit of loyalty.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018I had only been in the job two minutes. We hadn\u2019t played a competitive game yet.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018I felt powerful saying: ‘No’. I felt good. But I wondered if I was making the right decision.<\/span><\/em>
\u2018Right job, wrong time.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/em>
<\/p>\n