Deila: 'No Room For Doubt'

Photo by Jeff Holmes

Ronny Deila has no place for doubt in his mind ahead of Celtic's Champions League play-off clash with Malmo.

The Hoops are 3-2 up from last week's first-leg in Glasgow but the loss of a stoppage-time goal to the Swedish club makes the return game at the Swedbank Stadion more fraught than it ought to have been.

However, the Norwegian boss is taking a single-minded attitude to the match which could reportedly net the Scottish champions a minimum £15million along with the kudos of mixing it with Europe's elite.

In my mind we are going to win the game,'' he said.

That is what we are thinking of, all the time.

I never think about what happens if we lose or if we concede.

We want to keep a clean sheet and we want to win the game. That's what we prepare for.''

The former Stromsgodset boss, though, admitted some nervous tension ahead of the match although he stressed that it had not grown into any sort of fear.

If you don't have nerves in games like this you have to do something else,'' said Deila, who has a doubt over full-back Mikael Lustig, who is fighting to recover from a hamstring injury sustained in the first game at Celtic Park.

It is very good to have a little bit of nerves but no fear.

We know that the quality we have in our team is enough when we are at our best.

We showed at Celtic Park that we are a better team than Malmo.

Now we are away it is going to be a different game but we have confidence that if we are at our best we can win the game.

We need to win everything in Scotland, we have to get into the Champions League.

That's how it is at Celtic. We hate losing and we haven't done that for a long time.

So yes, there is pressure on us to win but we have that every time and we know how to deal with that.''