Ronny Deila annoyed and expresses Carlton Cole interest after Hearts draw

Failure to land a place in the group stages of the UEFA Champions League appears to have left a hangover that the club have yet to shake.

MIKAEL Lustig believes Celtic need to look beyond the familiar faces included in the Fenerbahce line-up on Thursday night as they seek to atone for poor finishing against Hearts on Saturday.

Celtic manager Ronny Deila admitted he was “irritated” after he saw a dogged Hearts side hold out for a point as it finished goalless at Celtic Park.

Hearts stopped the rot after losing their previous 10 games against Celtic by a staggering aggregate margin of 33 goals.

“I think he has not played for a little while, but you can still see he’s a good player”, said Lustig, when asked if he would like to see Celtic tie up the move for Cole, a former England worldwide. “I’m irritated because our performance today was good, and you can’t create more than we did in the first half”, Deila told the club’s official website.

“I think that is going to be tough (to make it)”.

“In Europe you get punished harder and you need to punish them when you get the chance”. “Leigh had four or five alone but he has scored in every game for a long period now”, his manager said. I don’t know for sure what is happening.

“But these are positive things we can work on”. With Griffiths off the boil and Commons not as influential as he can be, there seemed nowhere else to look for goals.

Yet, whatever else he might bring to the Celtic forward line, it is unlikely to encourage Deila to alter the way he sets his team out. “We will need to change things at times and everyone has to be ready”.

“I am very happy to see him (Efe) again, this time against each other”, he said.

Hearts come into this having lost their last three SPL fixtures on the spin, and while a 2-3 League Cup win at Kilmarnock in midweek might go some way to restoring confidence amongst a wounded squad, that result is insufficient to invest odds of 8/1 on an away win with any value.

Next up for Celtic is newly-promoted Hearts, who visit Celtic Park on Saturday.

The gap might have remained at five had defender Efe Ambrose not sacrificed himself with a “last man” challenge on Sam Nicholson in stoppage time to earn himself a red card from referee Kevin Clancy.

Neither that nor the goal that was rendered illegal were issues that Deila was keen to linger on in the aftermath of the encounter. Everyone has ups and downs over a season but I’m sure he’s irritated that he didn’t score. “It is very simple”.