Hugh Keevins: Time For Celtic To Take The Heat

If there's a mass outbreak of truancy from school and record absenteeism from workplaces on a countrywide basis on Friday morning, one man will be held responsible for the consequences.

Ronny Deila.

Celtic's manager has now let it be known that he believes a good blow-out, even one that results in pavement squatting and junk food binges, is an acceptable antidote to the rise of stress and strain.

It is now up to Ronny's Celtic side against Fenerbahce in the Europa League on Thursday night to show there's no need for anxiety, far less a walk on the wild side that makes Friday morning a no-no where business as usual is concerned.

In the meantime, I'm thinking of giving Ronny my home telephone number so that he can call my better half and instruct her on the advisability of letting her husband get sloshed whenever he feels his tolerance threshold being stretched to the limit.

To be fair to Ronny, I agree with him up to a point concerning his weekend defence of his team captain, Scott Brown, getting royally wasted days before the League Cup final against Dundee United last season.

Been there. Done that. Got sent to the spare room.

The difference is I'm not the captain of Celtic and my photograph wasn't splashed across the front page of a newspaper when I had my moments of human weakness.

The only person whose dignity was stained was me, and not a major football club always keen on preserving, and protecting, it's global image.

When I made that point on Superscoreboard at the time, the fall-out was fairly spectacular. Hostile abuse in the stret and nuisance calls to the house formed the response from those fans outraged by their captain being taken to task by some mouthy upstart who wouldn't have dared to say what he said to Broony's face, etc, etc, etc.

Anyway, let bygones be bygones and let's concentrate on how close the captain is to needing another night out to take the lid off the pressure cooker.

It's Ronny himself who's upped the ante for Celtic. He was the one who said on Saturday morning that he felt his team could go through the remainder of the season while winning every game they played. That was just before Celtic drew with Hearts at home and failed to take advantage of Aberdeen losing on the road at Inverness.

Now the pressure is on for Celtic to beat the Turks, to say nothing of Hamilton Accies next Sunday at New Douglas Park.

The Celtic fans can't have it all ways. Whenever their team fails to make the group stages of the main European competition they say Celtic is a Europa League club and not equipped for the Champions League.

Now some are saying the Europa League's an irrelevance and the domestic league is all that really matters. But at the same time they add they don't care what Aberdeen are doing because it's only Celtic's endeavours that count.

So what exactly do they care about when a chance to reduce Aberdeen's lead at the top of the table has been lost on the back of a goal-less draw with Hearts?

Time to be a little more humble and a little more realistic at the same time. The Europa League is important because it is a guage of Ronny Deila's suitability for European competition.

The domestic league can't be dismissed as a gimme either while there are concerns in defence and attack.

The Accies manager, Martin Canning, doesn't deserve to be dismissed after what he's been through. Dismissed as an inadequate replacement for Alex Neil last season, Martin has held his nerve and overcome talk of his side being certain candidates for relegation this season.

And I am one of the shame faced who assumed the Accies were doomed from the off.

Celtic need to be on their toes this week on two fronts and not blase or dismissive, on the park or off it.

Otherwise it'll be Paracetamol all round on Friday morning and the following Monday.

And that'll just be the supporters before a check is made on the dressing room.