Lennon: I hope Ronny Deila gets good start

Former Celtic boss hopes new boss starts well.

Ronny Deila will take charge of his first competitive game this week when Celtic face KR Reykjavik. And I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for him everything goes to plan and his team secure a positive result.

I mentioned on many occasions during my time as manager how difficult these games are at the start of the season.

Basically, your most important matches of the year come right at the beginning. There is so much at stake. More than anything, the financial implications of reaching the Champions League are hugely important.

However, for football reasons, it is also massive. The supporters live for the European nights at Celtic Park and the players love testing themselves against the best in the business.

As manager of Celtic I loved pitting wits against some of the top coaches from the continent and I’m sure Ronny will look forward to that challenge as well.

But Celtic don’t have the luxury of going straight into the group stage and therefore it makes for tense games such as Tuesday.

You can have better players than the opposing team but if your team have a bad day at the office you can find yourself up against it.

Ronny will have worked with the players now for a few weeks and will have a fair idea as to what he has to work with.

The good thing is it’s a team with Champions League experience and most of them were good enough to reach the last-16 the season before last.

They are fairly experienced at this level now and that will help. I’m confident they will secure a decent result in Iceland on Tuesday night and go through over the course of the two legs.

I sincerely hope Ronny gets off to a good start and goes on to enjoy a successful period as Celtic manager.