Deila Calls For The Best

Pic: Jeff Holmes

Ronny Deila believes it will take Celtic's best performance of his tenure to get past Inter Milan on Thursday night. The Scottish champions came back twice to draw 3-3 with the Serie A side in the first-leg of the last-32 Europa League tie at Parkhead last week. Substitute John Guidetti's injury-time strike kept European hopes alive and the Hoops still have a domestic treble in their sights. However, Celtic have yet to win in 11 visits to Italy and the Parkhead boss admits his side will have to step up a level if they are to break that record and get into the last-16. Speaking at the San Siro before his side trained, Deila, confident that defender Jason Denayer will have recovered from his calf complaint in time, said: "It is going to be a tough game, of course, and we need to win here. "But everything is possible in football and if we have our best performance this season and have a little bit of luck, then we have a chance. "We have everything to win and we are going to go for that victory and go through. "We created chances and scored three times last time so we have to get Inter Milan in trouble again but we have to defend in a better way. "A lot of the things we did in the last game was good but we have to defend even better. "If we can get a historic win here then it would be the moment of our lives." Deila believes Sunday's 4-0 home win over Hamilton to keep the Hoops top of the Scottish Premiership table takes them into the game in "good shape". The Norwegian said: "It is important to win matches and get confidence. "We also got confidence from the home match against Inter. "We saw that we could match them and create chances and that is important. "Tomorrow is going to be a very interesting game, exciting, and we are really looking forward to it. "I feel we have a good chance because we are in good shape now and we have good confidence. "As I said, we have everything to win so we have to go out there and give everything and be even better organised and then we will get our chances. "But we can't concede three goals again. Hopefully we have a clean sheet but we have showed we can score a lot of goals and hopefully we can get one more than our opponents." Gary Mackay-Steven, signed in the transfer window from Dundee United, insists Celtic will not just be bit-part players in the game. The 24-year-old winger said: "It is an iconic stadium and Inter Milan are a massive club but so are Celtic. "We are not here to be tourists but to do a job and that is to get a result tomorrow. "It is going to be a massive game for me. I played in Europe for Dundee United a few times but nothing on the scale of this game, or the scope. "It is the last-32, it is obviously massive for me, but it is a game I am relishing and I can't wait to experience it. "The first-leg was good in a lot of ways but I feel there is a lot more to come from us as a team, so it is exciting."