CELTIC owner Dermot Desmond has revealed he is "very confident" Ronny Deila is the man to lead the club forward and can see a day when the team played in English football.

The Irish billionaire, speaking to STV, gave his backing to the Norwegian, although he did accept that two seasons without Champions League football was a disappointment.

Desmond, who usually shuns speaking in public, said: "I think that we’re a better team than we were last year. We’ve had a few tough matches, Aberdeen did very well against us and in Europe we were a bit unlucky against Malmo but I think we’re on a learning curve and I feel our squad is much better than it was last year, and I think we’ll continuously improve.

"[Losing to Malmo] was a blow to the whole club and supporters. Leave aside the financial elements of it, we want to be competing with the best for our fans and it’s disappointing that we didn’t get through but we’ll endeavour to get there next year.

"He [Deila] has got two trophies under his belt and I think we can see from the good work he’s done with a lot of the players have come on. In the current squad if you take [Tom] Rogic and [Nir] Bitton have made considerable improvement and a lot of other players have made considerably improvement under Ronny’s guidance.

"So I feel very confident that he’ll continue to improve all the teams at Celtic. I’m very confident at Ronny’s future at Celtic.

"I think there’s a major disconnect between the finance available to teams in Scotland and the finances to the Premier League, La Liga etc. With the resource available and the club is in good financial health. What we’re trying to do is to apply intellectual capital onto financial capital too and improve the performances of the team.

"I’m confident that in the future the best of Ronny Deila and the best of Celtic is to come. I think in fairness we have greater resources than any other team at present in the Scottish Premiership. I think our first challenge is to win the Premiership and get into competing in the Champions League. After that it is qualifying for the later stages of the Champions League.

"Winning the league, it’s not about points. It’s like golf, it’s not how you play the hole it is what the result is at the end."

Desmond, who has many close contacts in the boardrooms of the English Premier League, also predicted that there would be a British Premier League in ten years, although this is something that has been regularly dismissed by club owners south of the border.

He said: "As far as developing other leagues, I think technology is going to change and evolve how football is sold in the future.

"Before it was a monopoly with either terrestrial TV or satellite TV, now everybody has the ability to broadcast their results and performances.

"In the future I think there will be different types of negotiations between teams and leagues that will evolve into more competitive leagues in the British Isles.

"I’m taking a 10-year view, what we see in the English Premiership today I don’t think will be around in 10 years time, I think there will be a British Premiership.

"I think it because like in Italy and in Spain you have the bigger clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid who negotiate their own football contracts because they are more advantageous.

"I think that will happen in the UK with Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal and then I think they will institute a change in the structure of the league."