CHRIS SUTTON has taken a swipe at Alex McLeish for stating that winning a domestic treble will not be enough for Celtic manager Ronny Deila.
Former Rangers boss McLeish has claimed that some degree of European success is a must for the embattled Norwegian now that there is no challenge in the Ladbrokes Premiership from the fallen Ibrox club.
Deila reacted angrily to those remarks and Sutton, who reached a UEFA Cup final with Celtic in 2003, feels there was no need for McLeish to stick his oar in.
“In fairness, I think it’s unnecessary,” said Sutton. “He’d be the first to jump on a bandwagon if a manager said that about him.
“I can understand Ronny coming out fighting. Why shouldn’t he?
“There is a lot of meddling at the moment and people saying a lot of things.”
Sutton feels Deila will hold onto his job to spearhead a third attempt at qualifying for the Champions League and believes calls for his head are a by-product of the knee-jerk culture that surrounds football in Glasgow.
“I think Ronny will be here for the start of the next campaign,” said Sutton. “In terms of analysing everything, it will come down to the whole season.
“What if they do go through in the Europa League? They might have to get something out of the last match, but perceptions change in one game. Rangers lose at the weekend and it is a disaster and Warburton is hopeless. I mean that tongue in cheek, but people are now thinking Hibs can win the Championship.
“That is just the way it is up here.”
Sutton, BT Sport's Scottish football expert, certainly believes Celtic are sure to win a fifth consecutive league title after pronouncing Aberdeen’s faltering challenge dead and buried.
“I expected Celtic’s involvement in Europe would turn out to be a real advantage for Aberdeen, but they have been an enormous disappointment of late.
“I can’t see them now going eight games on the spin again and I can’t see Celtic letting it slip with the quality of player they have at the club.
“I genuinely find it hard to understand. You can imagine a blip, but four defeats and a draw is one hell of a blip.
“They are vulnerable at the back and have a real lack of pace and teams are exploiting it.”
*Watch Ross County v Celtic live and exclusive on BT Sport Extra 1 from 3pm this afternoon. Visit btsport.com for more info.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel