Ronny Deila, the Celtic boss, has said that weariness was one of the reasons of his team’s heavy defeat in the European Cup qualifying match against Legia Warsaw the other day.

Celtic was beaten by a big margin of 1-4 in the first leg of that qualifier against Warsaw.

The Celts can come back and still win the tie on aggregate if they do something magical in the return leg on their home ground, but, that doesn’t seem to be likely.

According to Deila, his players were exhausted after playing a number of friendly matches over the last one month and that’s why, they couldn’t bring out their top game against Warsaw last weekend.

Deila has got a point. He is right in talking about tiredness of the players. In the last four and half weeks, the Celts have played 6 pre-season matches as well as the 3 European Cup qualifier matches. That makes it 9 in total.
Playing 9 competitive matches over a little more than 30 days, it can certainly take its toll on players of any team.
The pre-season schedule of Celtic had actually been finalized by their ex boss Neil Lennon.

Speaking in the press conference after the first leg against Warsaw, Deila said, “The boys were lacking intensity and it’s not really their fault. They have played so much of late that they got mentally tired.”

“The beginning was good I must say, but, then we lost our path.”

“The pre-season schedule will not be similar in 2015, that’s for sure. Neil had a different thought, but, as far as I am concerned, it should not be like this.”

Celtic made it to the third qualifying round of the European Cup by beating KR Reykjavik (a club from Iceland) by 5-0 on aggregate.