Ronny Deila owes Neil Lennon an apology over chip-gate

It’s all down to Deila and not Celtic’s diet.

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Ronny Deila criticising Celtic players’ diets under Neil Lennon.

And as far as the Norwegian’s reputation is concerned, I reckon that talking rubbish has proved far more harmful than eating it.

Even if you accept Deila’s argument that he inherited a team with a junk-food problem and I don’t think it’s even remotely credible you’re accepting that Lenny managed to lead his players to victory over Barcelona with a belly-full of chips!

What has Deila achieved by comparison? Absolutely nothing. And frankly, I think he owes Neil an apology.

To attack a fellow manager particularly one who has been so successful in an attempt to deflect attention from your own failings is seriously out of order.

And what makes it even worse is that Deila’s logic simply doesn’t stack up!

In my job, I speak to football people every day people like Danny Murphy, who hasn’t long finished playing for the likes of Liverpool and Fulham.

I speak to guys a little bit older, like Ray Parlour, and I think about what I used to eat when I was playing.

The consensus amongst all of us is crystal clear: when you’re playing two games a week, you can eat what you like, within reason.

You’re burning calories galore as a professional footballer. And you’re doing it every single day.

You can have pasta, you can have steak, you can have chicken you can even have a burger and chips on the odd occasion. It’s simply not going to make a difference.

I don’t deny that things have changed for the better in terms of player nutrition. In my day, it was barely considered, and pre-match meals were all over the place.

I used to have boiled chicken and baked beans for instance, but other guys might have a steak or scrambled egg on toast. Some players used to start the day off with a big fry-up then miss the pre-match meal.

Ossie Ardiles had a glass of white wine before a game! You were basically allowed what you wanted.

You won’t find players these days getting stuck into a fried breakfast or hitting the bottle on the morning of a game, and rightly so.

But for me, to suggest that players can NEVER indulge themselves after a hard week’s work is simply tosh and the proof, if you’ll excuse the pun, is in the pudding.

Under Neil Lennon, Celtic won three League titles, two Scottish Cups and reached the last 16 of the Champions League.

Under Ronny Deila, they have been dumped out of the Champions League and sit mid-table in the Premiership after being widely criticised for a series of disjointed performances.

When you see it laid out in black and white like that, it becomes pretty easy to sum the whole thing up.

The idea that the position Celtic have found themselves in this season is down to a poor diet under the previous manager is nonsense.

It’s down to Deila. Simple as that.