AROUND about this last year Nir Bitton did something extremely sensible. He listened to what Ronny Deila said and opted to do his bidding.

To quote the Norwegian, the relationship between player and manager is similar to a marriage in that if there is no confrontation then it is dead. He actually said this yesterday.

The trick then is not to ignore what your better half has to say, and Deila is very much the man of the house if that isn’t stretching this analogy to somewhere weird.

Deila did not know what to do with Bitton. The Israeli had fallen short of what was expected of him. So they had a chat and the midfielder listened, which is a lot more than some of his then team-mates have done.

Those who do not take their telling off Deila are soon on the way out of the club, or in the cases of Anthony Stokes and Derk Boerrigter shoved so far down the pecking order that Danny McGrain has a better chance of getting some game time.

It was put to Deila that Bitton has even been compared to Barcelona’s Sergio Busquets, who has won all there is to win, and the Celtic manager did not recoil at this suggestion.

At 23, there is so much to come from the best player in Scotland. He is better than Victor Wanyama, who moved for £12million, and is playing some superb football at the moment. It's been quite a journey.

“Last year I didn’t understand where I could use him,” admitted Deila. “He was not giving me everything but we had a very good talk and he understood what I wanted and started to do it. Now you can see what kind of improvement he has made.

“Very rarely is it down to an attitude problem. It’s down to a player’s understanding and knowledge. He did not understand what I meant by 100 per cent.

"We worked on three issues. The first was that if I said sprint in training you have to sprint – not give 70 per cent. He had to be quicker on the ball and go forward as everything went sideways. Now he penetrates much more. He was also too central and now he can see an angled pass. He has started to widen the picture even more.

"The final thing was defensively he also had to win more ball. It was not enough for him just to be there – he had to win the ball also. That improvement has been unbelievable. The work rate with him as a ball winner has been incredible.”

Had Bitton been the sort of footballer who allowed any critical words to go in one ear and out the other – and there are plenty of them – he would have been moved on by now. Most of those Deila has allowed to go thought they knew better than their manager, which is why they don’t play for Celtic any more.

“If I have to have the same conversation with Nir five times in five months then you give up," Deila said. "Those players are finished at Celtic because they can’t handle the way it is going. The others are improving and one man can’t afford to stand still. That player might have been good enough at one point but it won’t stay that way.

“Not everybody has reacted as I would have wanted to these confrontations. But I treat them with respect and I have given everybody a chance. But sometimes you have to take decisions because this is not a kindergarten, it’s a high performance team and we have to get results so you don’t have time to wait for everybody all the time."

So this Busquets comparison. A bit daft? Deila does not believe it to be OTT.

“I think offensively he looks very like Busquets and defensively he is on his way," said Celtic's impressed manager. "But he still has to work on when the ball goes over his head, what’s happening then with his recovery runs and how he thinks in that situation.

“When he has the ball in front of him he is good at winning possession and be aggressive. But the things that makes Scott Brown the best player I have had to work with is when the ball goes over his head into dangerous areas. He knows how to shut down the right spaces and take out the runs from the midfield into the box.

“So Nir still has things to deliver but he was at one level, now he is higher and he can go even higher - and once he’s up there everything is possible. He can play in the highest levels in Europe.

“I told him to look at Broony and Stefan Johansen. I told him I needed him at that level. His accuracy in passing accuracy was 90 per cent. But 50 per cent of that was sideways.

“I asked him to look at Stefan and Broony who had 68 per cent of passes going forward. They only had 81 per cent accuracy, but I said to him if he could improve going forward and stay at 90 per cent he’d be world class.

“We worked for two or three months at this but last season I had 100 things to do and it wasn’t about me focusing on Nir. Initially I didn’t see an improvement, but I had to keep talking to him. If I didn’t do that then we would have grown further apart.”

And in these days when half of all marriages end in divorce, it is nice that these two kissed and made up.