Hugh Keevins: It's all in the mind

Player not currently playing throws a wobbly and turns bitter on twitter. Big deal.

Celtic's Anthony Stokes' meltdown prior to his team kicking off against Inverness Caley Thistle isn't, as some would like to believe, an indication that Ronny Deila has, to use that well worn cliche, lost the dressing room.

He may very well have done for all I know, but greetin' faced players can be found at the most successful, and harmonious, of clubs the world over.

If an individual isn't getting a game when he thinks there's a well founded case for being used on a regular basis then it's standard procedure for that person to go deeper and deeper into a dark place, leading to the moment when he finally gives full vent to his anger in an explosion of frustration Stokes chose social media for his outburst in the full and certain knowledge that by the time Celtic had finished winning all three points in the Highlands Deila would be asked at his post-match press conference what he made of a player's outburst that he had not yet seen.

Ronny described it as disrespectful to the other members of the Celtic squad. I beg to differ.

Any of Stokes' team-mates would, after a prolonged exile from the first team, feel exactly the way he did when he woke up on Sunday morning and would eventually have shared their despondency with the rest of us.

Now it so happens the Sunday papers also happened to carry the story of Deila working on his psychological state with a lady from his homeland of Norway, Mette Rosseland.

She has been in Glasgow for some days providing guidance to the manager, her specialist subject being the removal of negativity from the mind. The lady's services are open to all at Lennoxtown by all accounts, so maybe Ronny should insist that Stokes signs up for a few lessons on how to stay focused in a positive place.

But it'll never catch on.

Scottish football, for the lost part, regards sports psychology as one of the Dark Arts. People like Rosseland, highly qualified and extremely successful though they may be, are described as 'Shrinks' or 'Mind doctors' whenever they wander into our down to earth world with its traditionally sceptical ways.

Deila is a brave man to enlist the services of his compatriot at a time when his own credentials for the Celtic job are coming under intense scrutiny. The assistance of a sports psychologist will be seen as a sign of weakness at best and offer an invitation to the more exciteable to claim, at worst, that Ronny has lost the plot.

It'll be good to get Jimmy Calderwood's take on it all, from grumpy players spilling the beans to the Twitterati to managerial mind games, on Superscoreboard tonight. Jimmy was born and brought up in Govan, where the master of dressing room dynamics and how to handle them, Sir Alex Ferguson, came from. And Jimmy, during his days at Dunfermline, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock, was never one to give the impression that he called a spade a gardening implement.

The subject of strong mentality is also highly topical the day after Andy Murray basically won Team GB the Davis Cup single handedly.

The phenomenon that is Murray played a hard fought doubles match against Belgium in Ghent on Saturday afternoon, had literally hours to recuperate and then pitched up back on court on Sunday morning to win a trophy that had eluded Great Britain since 1936. The knighthood is now long overdue while we can only marvel at the strength of one man's mind, unaffected by the weight of history pressing on his shoulders and physically able to reach a peak twice in less than twenty four hours.

It makes poor old Stokesy look a bit of a cry baby while wittering on Twitter about getting a game being more important than getting a wage.

But that's how it works in a group setting. What also happens is that the manager who finds one of his players has been publicly airing his disappointment/disbelief/ disgust at the way he's being treated(Delete whichever is inapplicable) is even less likely to give him a game.

If Anthony were suddenly to appear against Hamilton Accies next Saturday it would look like weakness on Deila's part, so he won't be anywhere near the pitch at Celtic Park.

The Irishman will simply have to stay strong, stay focused and stay near his telephone because the January transfer window isn't so far away from opening. And there looks to be, on the face of it, infinitely more chance of a move than a game.