Ronny Deila was always seen by many in the press as the ‘cheap option’ for Celtic at a time when their greatest rivals where starting up again as a new club in the Scottish lower leagues.
And to be fair to the press, that was also the view of many Celtic fans as well.
Even although Deila came with a fairly decent pedigree as a winner of the Norwegian Tippeligaen League and the Norwegian Cup, the fact that he was an unknown manager coming to one of the biggest clubs in the world meant that he was on a hiding to nothing.
Much the same way that Ange Postecoglou was before he started to put the press guys in their place.
Speaking on the Press Box podcast with Graeme Spiers, former Rangers manager Mark Warburton revealed that the press already had it in for Deila before he even took over the Rangers hotseat, “The best thing I ever learned about Glasgow was on my first day, I landed at Glasgow Airport and a very good journalist said to me, ‘There’s always a good cop and a bad cop in Glasgow.‘
He said, ‘Right now Ronny Deila is a bad cop, you won’t be able to do any wrong.’
“And I couldn’t understand what he’s talking about Graham. I think we’d beat Kilmarnock one nil with a very scrappy goal, it was, ‘Rangers storm on again’.
“And Celtic might win two nil and it goes, ‘Host of chances missed by Celtic in embarrassing display’.
“Anything was negative.”
That is an incredible insight into how the former Celtic gaffer was treated by the press in pre planned negative headlines that proved Deila was vilified from the minute he walked into the country.
What is also shows is the professionalism of journalism in Scotland doesn’t exist and it is little wonder Celtic fans do not trust the media.