RONNY DEILA insists he is not interested in taking any credit for Celtic's sixth title win in a row – even though Brendan Rodgers has made only minimal adjustments to the squad since his departure, and even new signings like Moussa Dembele and Scott Sinclair were already on his radar.

While the Northern Irishman has been an overwhelming success since arriving at the club last summer, taking the club into the Champions League and going unbeaten domestically all season long, even he was quick to acknowledge the recruitment and development work done by his predecessor prior to his arrival.

Deila told Herald Sport that he was "so glad" that it was Rodgers who took over and was delighted to see so many of the players that he worked with prospering. Even when his future with Celtic was unclear, Deila was meeting twice with Dembele's agent and speaking to Sinclair in person.

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"Look, I don't want to take any honour for anything," insisted Deila. "I think again this is a Scottish thing. 'What you have done?' I worked – together with John Collins, John Kennedy, almost everyone who is there just now, Peter [Lawwell] and all the others.

"I think they have made an unbelievably good season," he added. "I was so happy that Brendan Rodgers was coming after me, because I knew that he is a very, very good coach and a modern coach. I think he works in a lot of the ways that I worked and he continues to work in this development culture where you have high quality in training, with a lot of preparation and planning to get all the things you want to get into it. He was a fantastic step for the Celtic board to take, you can see that from the results. And also he is coming from Northern Ireland, so he has that Celtic mindset. It has turned out very, very well."

Deila's last act for the club may have been one of his most important – reassuring Rodgers that most things were in place for him to be a success in Glasgow. " I spoke to him before he signed," said Deila. "I had heard rumours by then that he was going to be the one who replaced me but he spoke to me before he signed for the club. I had also met him at Liverpool when he was manager there. I came to study Liverpool for a few days and I had an interview with him in his office.

"He just wanted information about how things were and what I thought about things," he added. "I guess I sold the club to him but I was honest about it, I am always honest. I told him what was good about it and what he should do something about. But what he has done, together with all the staff and the players, has been tremendous – a very good season. It could be an historic one. I don't see why not."

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How many of Celtic's triumphant title winners will give their former manager a thought at their moment of triumph, which could well come at Tynecastle this weekend? Deila, who declined an offer from Peter Lawwell to attend the recent Old Firm match, will be too busy with his pre-season preparations for the new campaign with Valerenga to pay a visit before perhaps the Autumn. But he will be following things from afar and his fingerprints are all over this team, even if it is highly questionable whether they would ever had achieved such heights of consistency had he remained in charge.

It was he who handed Kieran Tierney his debut when he had a perfectly good established left back there in the form of Emilio Izaguirre, took a punt on Craig Gordon and was quick to recognise the role Scott Brown could play as captain and dressing room enforcer. It was he who saw a player of worth in Tom Rogic, when it appeared that his future may be away from the club. The signing of central defenders Erik Sviatchenko, Jozo Simunovic and Dedryck Boyata all came about under his watch, as did that of Patrick Roberts and Stuart Armstrong, even if the latter was often deployed on the left. He made Leigh Griffiths a mainstay up front, devoted man hours to ending James Forrest's injury woes, and even did much of the leg work on two of the big signings who arrived after his departure, that of Dembele and Sinclair – even if it took the arrival of Rodgers to get both of them over the line.

"I watched Dembele twice when I was there, because he was going out of contract and we knew that we had a chance," said Deila. "If he was going to go inside England it was going to cost a lot of money but we knew that if he went outwith, then it would be quite cheap. Of course there was a possibility there, if more of the money could end up going to the player and the agent and not to the club!

"So that was a great signing, but it was something we were working towards several times when I was there," he added. "I never talked to the player, I just talked to the agent, but he had to go out of contract with Fulham first before we could get to that next stage.

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"I also talked to Sinclair when he went to Aston Villa [in 2015], I called him when he was at Manchester City, but he wanted more time in England. Of course Brendan knew him as a player which makes it easier, but I tried him as well."

Will his phone be red hot with messages of thanks from his players to their former gaffer? Probably not. Football doesn't work that way. But the Norwegian feels he can hold his head high.

"In football, when you move on, you have enough with yourself," said Deila. "It is not about that. But when I see people I have a good relationship with all of them. When I left I had a very good feeling. It was the right moment. It was good for the club, and it was good for me, and for the players and everything. You could see it. And it has turned out very good.

"When I came in there were some very difficult situations for the club," he added. "Because it was a change of generation. Kris [Commons], Stokesy [Anthony Stokes] and all these boys had done well but I felt they were dropping a bit. The first bit was very hard but we got some good signings in, Jason Denayer and John Guidetti on loan was very good. Then we got [Stuart] Armstrong and Gary in the next window. And we got good shape in that team in the first year. From Christmas to the end of the season we were very, very good. We didn't concede goals almost and we only won games all the time. I felt we had real momentum.

"And we developed players there," he added. "We had Tom Rogic and nobody was talking about him. He was finished with the club. I remember saying to him after 10 months that I believed in him because 'I have seen you play football'. I will give you a chance. This season and my last season in charge, he was very good, he showed very good progress.

"We had Nir Bitton, who was in and out of the team, but made big, big progress. We had James Forrest, who was so tired of being injured. He came to my office, and he was so depressed. And I said to him, if we are going to do this right, you need to change your routine completely because things have been so bad. While I don't think I got the best out of him, at least he wasn't injured. I used a lot of effort to give him the treatment and what he needed to get back on track again.

"Leigh Griffiths, who was there when I arrived, was another man who came on well when I was there, although he obviously has had big competition there this season with Dembele. And we have Kieran Tierney and Craig Gordon, who is a fantastic player and a fantastic guy. I have seen the development he has had when playing out with his feet, that is a fantastic credit to Woodsy [Stevie Woods, goalkeeping coach] and Brendan and the others. If he had one weakness that was it, he is a fantastic goalkeeper and a really good guy."