The Ronny Deila Thread

Rodgers is by far the better manager and coach.

Ronny was a good coach, but a terrible manager.

 

He was terrible all round. He couldn't even get the players to his desired fitness level

 

Some goal Ronny
https://mobile.twitter.com/ValerengaOslo/status/833718385980604416/video/1

 

NORWAY was scientifically proven last week to be the happiest place on the planet to live and you would be able to demonstrate further evidence of that fact by measuring the width of the grin which is etched upon Ronny Deila's face. The former Celtic manager meets me in the Valhall Arena, the full size indoor training venue in Oslo which his new club Valerenga get the run of, as youth players and the club's women's team cheerfully mingle with a few stray members of the club's first team playing staff on international week. The name Valhall derives from the same root in Old Norse as Valhalla, the majestic mythical hall in Asgard where the Gods admit half of those slain in battle. Perhaps Deila too has moved on to a better place.
While they haven't won the league since 2005, this is the biggest club in Oslo, a side with no shortage of ambition. Just over the road, the state-of-the- art 22,000-seater Valerenga stadium is springing up, intended to be fully operational by August. Charged with a long-term aim to usurp Rosenborg as the best club in the country, this is the hottest managerial ticket in the country - save perhaps that which Iceland hero Lars Lagerback has with the national team. That alone should be enough to refute any suggestion that Deila was somehow viewed as damaged goods due to the messy end of his time at Celtic.
But what strikes you most is the sense of organised chaos about this place. Big city or not, this is a community club, far removed from the uber professionalism of the football department at Lennoxtown, a structure which - as much respect as he retains for Peter Lawwell and Dermot Desmond - the Norwegian he admits he found stifling at times. This is Deila's new normal. And he wouldn't have it any other way.
"My life now is very different," the 41-year-old told Herald Sport. "The culture here is totally different. Here you are a normal person when you are a manager. The hierarchy is very flat. Yes, you are the boss but also at the same time it isn't all about you.
"In Scotland, it is like a huge pyramid," he added. "When you go onto the aeroplane with Celtic, I have seat 1A, John Collins has 1C, and then it is Peter [Lawwell]. You can see exactly where you stand when you look at that plane, all the way right through to the media at the very back!
"That would never happen in Norway. In Norway we sit all over the place. There is no hierarchy here. I like that much more. It is much more productive.
"Because I think the hierarchy gives people fear. They are scared to make decisions because they are scared to make mistakes. I thought at Celtic people were scared to make decisions because if they were wrong it could cost them their job."
The logical conclusion to this line of thinking is to deduce that this same fear of failure eventually did for him in the end. As liberal as he would have loved things to be at Lennoxtown, he was also a stickler for discipline and diet. But did he eventually bow to popular demand and decide that some battles were not worth fighting? Not according to Deila. He insists he didn't shirk the big decisions at Celtic Park, and even the ones that he got wrong were merely mistakes that he can learn from.
"I wasn't even close to doing that," said Deila. "I WAS the boss at Celtic. That is when you do have to make decisions. I wasn't afraid of making decisions. That is the only way I feel you can improve as a coach and a person as well. You need to make mistakes. You need to make decisions, you have to take risks. And I have always done that in my career. If you are in a comfort zone you always go to the next level. At Celtic I found that unbelievably hard, but also very interesting.
"But Norwegian footballers are more ... well for one, they are not millionaires," he added. "That means they don't get all that attention they get in Scotland. There are less foreign players as well, so it is maybe a more united group. If you had only Scottish players in your team then I think you would get the same thing. Also the culture in Norwegian society is more liberal. It is more open. Here, everybody will come into my office and talk to me. Here you play 38 games, if you are lucky enough to get to the cup final. There it was 60 a year. It is a very tough life. Being here is a holiday compared to Celtic."
THE sense of calm contentedness which Deila exudes applies to his personal life as well as his professional one. He has a new six-month old daughter Isabella to dote over, born in Marbella in September, where his partner Ana comes from and he manages to jet away every so often to spend a fair amount of his downtime. His two teenage twin girls from a previous relationship, Thale and Live, both play international handball for Norway.
And unlike his time in Glasgow, by and large, he enjoys the freedom to go about his business as he pleases. As much as he regards himself as a man of the people, being mobbed and expected to produce an impromptu performance of the Ronny Roar - his trademark celebration when he ostentatiously pumped his fist to all four corners of the room - every time you venture out, must get a little bit wearing after a while.
"The worst of it was that every time you went out your door people knew who you were and you did not get peace anywhere," said Deila. "If you went anywhere you had to know what you were doing. You had to know that you would have to take this amount of pictures with different people. You get that kind of attention all the time.
"You are much freer here, especially in Oslo," he added. "It is a bit different in the smaller cities, but even then people are not running up to you and taking pictures of you all the time. They just look at you here, although when they get drunk they are a little bit different. But especially here in Oslo the passion for football is not so big."
Towards the end of his time, as his supporters amongst the Celtic supporter base began becoming outnumbered by his detractors, performing that Ronny Roar must have become quite a chore. "Yes, but it came out of nothing," he said. "I think it is important to be part of the fans. I appreciated what they are doing, because football without the fans is nothing.
"We will see if I will do it here too. I have done it with my two last clubs. But we need to get some wins first! I think it is important to try to create an atmosphere. And of course kids I think love stuff like that. It provides interest, makes them want to come back to the stadium. I am a working class guy, down to earth, that is important for me. Stromsgodset, Celtic, and Valerenga, they are working class clubs. I feel very safe in those environments."
IT is likely to be August before Deila enjoys the chance to return to Celtic Park again. At Parkhead for the Barcelona match in the Champions League, he declined an invite to the recent Old Firm match, and will be too busy getting on with his new life in Norway to bask in any reflected glory when Celtic clinch their sixth Scottish top flight title in a row, perhaps as soon as next weekend.
There are all manner of last minute preparations to be done ahead of next week's Tippeligaen season opener against Viking, but this won't actually be his first match in charge. Having signed a contract to take over back in July 2016, he oversaw the last four matches of the previous season in December to ensure that the club avoided relegation, enough for him to joke that like Celtic this season he too remains unbeaten. Building something of note at this club is the kind of long term development project which Deila just loves to get his teeth into.
"This, by Scottish standards, is like coaching Hibs maybe, or Hearts," said Deila. "But if you get it going here, there is good intensity in the club.
"This club has a kind of laid-back, Bohemian, identity," he added. "I can relate to that! But at the same time we want to be professional. We need to be at one with the people but at the same time be professional. You can be both but you have to do it at the right time.
"They haven't won the title since 2005, in fact they have only been once in the sixth best in the last ten years," he added. "But it is the biggest club in Oslo and they have the best supporters. When they met Chelsea in 2002, the Chelsea fans ranked them the best away support all year.
"It is a club which had big financial problems, but we have an owner [John Fredericksen] who loves the club and he wants to try one last time to get things going and build a club that can be top of Norwegian football. So now the new stadium is coming and we are building a team from the bottom, just like I did with Stromsgodset. The opportunities here are bigger than anywhere else, because there are 700,000 people in Oslo. The talent is here, the sponsors are here."
He wouldn't rule out a return to British football at some point down the line, but if there is a backward glance at his past life at Celtic, it doesn't last long. "No, I am happy here now," said Deila. "I didn't even think that I would ever be in that position. I had it. I did some good things and I did some bad things. But in the end, the club [Celtic] is in a better situation now. And me too. I have developed as a person and a coach. I am on my way.
"Coming here now it feels like you are training a school team, because you know exactly what you are going to do and say. That is when you realise just how much you have learned."

 

Quite a frank interview. Can't help bit like him.

 

he wasn't suited to the pressure cooker glasgow goldfish bowl

i believe he will be succesfull with valerenga, he'll need to build the team first though buy he'll get the time to do it

 

To me, that makes Lennon's achievements at Celtic all the more impressive.

 

He's a good man.

 

Today is the first game for Ronny als the new Valerenga-manager.
Against Viking FK.

 

That interview screams out 'The job was too intense for me'.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/ValerengaOslo/status/848975651281530881/video/1



ULLEVAAL STADIUM: For when he was asked about how ambitious this Vålerenga team should be after winning the series premiere, he replied ore clear.

- I do not care objectives. If you ask me about it, I reply gold every time. For of course we go out to win every game we play, said Ronny Deila in the press zone after 1-0 over Viking.



He was delighted with the first 20 minutes after the break when Vålerenga ran into high gear and decided the match.


He was ditto dissatisfied with the last period before the break when he seemed mostly went wrong.

- We can not have such a low nadir. When we lose battles.

- What was the theme during the break?

- That we have to be ourselves. It was maybe a little high shoulders in some, but they must endure this. Fortunately, some stood up and decided the match, had no one made it, I had himself taken the blame for the loss. But now it was fortunately victory on a fairly average day, he said.

Already Thursday is the new battle against Haugesund away and Vålerenga traveling west on Wednesday. Who he has available at the time, he does not know.

- I've never experienced before that in practice the whole midfield was injured before the game. Of our original players I had just Herman Stengel available. But our new players did their job and will only get better when we get coordinated guys a little more.

- What was most gratifying?

- That we managed to get out more energy after the break. But we have plenty to work with. In defense, we must act more united, we must admit that we were lucky that we did not get any backward against a good Vikinglag says VIF coach.

- Bård Finne?

- A good footballer who has learned what is required. Reminds me of Mini Jakobsen with all its races into the back room. But we have a lot to develop the interaction offensively as well, says Deila after his comeback in the Norwegian league.

And Bård Finne?

- We will not take off after one-goal victory in a match. For my own part, it was lovely to get started. The scoring could well not be easier. To push it across the finish line by 80 centimeters should be attacking player ready, he said.

 

Very likeable bloke... just not up to the Celtic job.

 

Ronny's team Valerenga lost today the third game in for matches - 4:0 in Molde. Well, I think, he conceived his return to Norway in a different way.

 

They were * horrible, but Norwegian football as a whole is rotten at this point. Not just meaning quality, but there's something really rotten at the core of the sport here. It's a very insular country, and a lot of the players who "make it" to Eliteserien think they've "made it" in broader terms. You might get one good year out of a youth player and then he'll either crumble at the first sign of adversity or become obsessed with Instagram and not give a * about the sport after he gets a decent contract. Vålrerenga look like they don't have a soul. Not sure what Ronny can do about it.

 

Thanks for your remarks.
You know, Sturm Graz bought Martin Ovenstad a couple of months ago and he has real problems to get into the starting line-up. We expected more from him but maybe he needs just a little time.

 

Sorry to say, but I wouldn't expect too much. Many of this generation have failed to not only play abroad, but to live abroad if it means being anywhere other than London or NYC. The only players that have stuck it out have tended to be those from immigrant backgrounds (either them or their parents) who grew up in the few tough areas of the country. It's why I was so enthusiastic about Ajer, who seems a bit different, and generally nonplussed about Ødegaard, who I don't think has the mentality to succeed in a difficult and high-pressure environment.

 

Good old Ronny Deila thinks, as he described in an interview with Dagbladet that he would have done a better job at Celtic, if he would have had a player career outside of Norway. That he never qualified for the CL was like a nightmare for him, he added.

https://www.dagbladet.no/sport/deila---min-egen-karriere-som-spiller-ble-en-ulempe-i-celtic/67593532

 

What a pointless thing to say.

Aye, I could have been a brain surgeon if I stuck in at school.