DERMOT DESMOND calls the shots at Celtic. He sets the bar for everyone else.

Comments issued at the Dunhill Links golf event in late September made it clear, reduced circumstances or not, what the club's major shareholder expects in terms of results from the footballing department.

"I think our first challenge is to win the Premiership and get into competing in the Champions League," he said. "After that, it is qualifying for the later stages of the Champions League."

He also gave his backing to Ronny Deila that afternoon. That, of course, was before two shambolic and profoundly depressing displays against a team sitting sixth in the Norwegian Tippeligaen.

It is surely difficult for anyone who watched those two defeats to Molde in Group A of the Europa League to believe that Deila is going to be trusted with the task of getting Celtic into UEFA's premier competition next season. Let's not even get involved in talking about offering any kind of resistance to the likes of Barcelona and Bayern Munich should they make it.

If Desmond genuinely does demand a place back at European football's top table, it is possible for him to stick with the Norwegian given his record in that arena so far?

Alex McLeish, the former Rangers manager, created a stir last week when stating that domestic success is not enough for Celtic when their city rivals are stuck in the Championship. Over and above the ever-so-predictable remonstrating, the simple fact is that he is perfectly correct.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Molde's head coach, said as much after full-time on Thursday night. Despite bending over backwards to offer support to his countryman, Deila, even he conceded that Celtic "win the league by just turning up every year".

Of course, it is part of Deila's problem. There is no credible competition in Scotland. The gulf in standard between the Ladbrokes Premiership and the Europa League is proving almost impossible to bridge.

Deila does not have the standard of player available to past Celtic managers. He has only a fraction of the budget. He is charged, in part, with rearing players to sell on. He was given John Collins and John Kennedy as his coaching staff rather than his own men. There are clear issues he has to deal with.

Many of his ideas are worthwhile. He wants a seamless transition from academy to first-team and has really helped build a stronger infrastructure at Lennoxtown, but short-term results matter.

This is Celtic we are talking about and nothing, absolutely nothing, excuses some of these performances in Europe. Qualifying for the Champions League is massively important. They have to be capable of beating sides such as Malmo, Maribor and Legia Warsaw.

They are not. The facts are there to prove it.

Being taken apart on two separate occasions in quick succession by a side that has been plodding through a dreadful season in Norway – a season that got their manager the sack not so long ago - has got to be the final straw.

Money is everything in football. Scottish clubs are never going to win a European trophy again. We should not expect them to. However, Celtic's budget dictates that the team should be capable of defeating opposition from Sweden, Norway, Poland and Slovenia.

Celtic cannot defend. They are simply incapable of it against players of any pace and quality. Yes, it is hard to cope with the loss of Virgil van Dijk and Jason Denayer, but why on earth is Deila placing faith in players such as Efe Ambrose and Tyler Blackett? Dedryck Boyata, one of his more prominent summer signings, is not looking too clever either.

Whether these players were his choice or not is immaterial. He has to make them work.

Deila, of course, blames much of Celtic's problem in Europe on individual mistakes. Individual mistakes have, indeed, been fatal, but they do not explain Molde continually carving them open time and time and time again by hitting them on the counter.

They did it for fun over both matches. That is about far more than one-off rushes of blood to the head.

Deila has shown little in Europe to suggest he is capable of taking Celtic on a decent run in the Champions League and that is what the board demands. Those are not my words. Those are the words of Dermot Desmond.

We can argue long and hard about just how realistic that target may be in the current environment, but it is the target all the same.

Deila's side seem wholly incapable of hitting it and the Norwegian is quickly running out of opportunities to change that almost universally-held perception.

It is why Desmond and his chief executive, Peter Lawwell, had better start the process of looking for his replacement. Deila looks like he cannot deliver what they want.