WILFRIED NANCY IS NO RUSSELL MARTIN, HE’LL SOON PROVE IT
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Wilfried Nancy joined a pretty exclusive club on Sunday. He now stands alongside greats such as Henrik Larsson, Ange Postecoglou and Wim Jansen.
The three named above all lost their respective first league games with Celtic.
It should be added though that, by the end of the subsequent seasons that followed, all three were holding aloft the league championship trophy.
Losing 2-1 to Hearts at the weekend was a sore one, no doubt about that. However, our new manager showed a lot of guts in choosing to immediately implement his own formation and footballing philosophy.
We had a good debate about it in the ACSOM group chat ahead of the team being announced. I said that I think it would have been a good idea to run with a Martin O’Neill style set-up for at least one more game, since Nancy had, at that point, spent only a matter of hours on the training pitch with the players.
WILFRIED NANCY’S SYSTEM WILL TAKE TIME AND PROPER RECRUITMENT TO FULLY REALIZE
However, as I said a couple of weeks ago, whatever you think of Wilfried Nancy as a manager, he is not the type to simply follow the lead of others.
He is his own man, and he’ll carve his own path. Sunday was the first step in doing so, even if it did bring a series of hysterical, yet utterly predictable, responses from some quarters.
On another day, if Daizen Maeda’s shooting was a bit sharper, and just some of the intricate, slick passing moves we were trying had come off, we could easily have been 2 or 3 ahead by half-time,
Going the other way, whilst we will all be eternally grateful to Martin O’Neill for his 8-game return as interim manager, and putting us in a position where we can still challenge domestically and retain some hope for Europe this season, the team was clearly “running on fumes” by the time we saw off Dundee last midweek.
Even a managerial genius like Martin O’Neill can only work with the tools he is given, and motivational man-management alone will only elevate a struggling team for so long.
A radical change was still needed, regardless of whoever, ultimately became the next Celtic manager.
Unfortunately for Wilfried Nancy, both Ange Postecoglou and Wim Jansen still had the rest of an entire season to get their act together after coming up short in those first couple of games. Nancy will have around half of that time, and the stiffest challenge we’ve faced from a team outside Glasgow in decades.
When Hearts went in 1-0 up a half-time on Sunday, my honest feeling was “this is robbery with violence.” There’s no way Celtic should be behind in this game after dominating so much in the first 45.
The second half was a different story, and it was clear that several players are not yet comfortable with the new system.
That does not mean however that we panic and revert back to 4-3-3. At the end of the day, many of the same folk complaining about our new manager changing up the formation on Sunday were crying out for such a change just weeks ago, before Brendan Rodgers left the building once again.
Roma are next up, and in all realities, whether it was Rodgers, O’Neill or Nancy in the dugout, I’d still say the chances of any result other than a convincing win for the Italians are remote.
We simply don’t have the current depth or quality in our squad to reliably and consistently match that level.
It’s cliché to call the upcoming Europa League tie a “free hit”. Instead, I would call it an “opportunity” for the manager to further refine his tactics ahead of a far more important game next week: The League Cup Final. Winning that game, by any means necessary, will go a long way to earning the manager some goodwill and much-needed breathing space, ahead of Celtic’s most important transfer window since the summer 2021 rebuild.
Beyond that, we just need to keep as close to Hearts as possible in the league until January. And let’s not be too pessimistic here. Apart from Sunday’s smash and grab job against us, Hearts’ form hasn’t been great lately. They still have to face some very strong opposition, and Rangers, before the end of the year.
We could still very easily be top of the league by Christmas, and by this time next week we will, hopefully, have our first trophy of the season in the cabinet.
But even if we don’t, that’s not Wilfried Nancy’s fault. To restructure a Celtic team and put it into a position to win the league after a poor recent run is tough. To do it in the middle of a season, when we are second place and struggling, is pretty much unprecedented.
I saw enough flashes of positivity there on Sunday to believe Nancy will get it right, if given the time and the personnel needed to do so.
The blame for Celtic’s current predicament lies firmly in the boardroom and, at least to some extent, in the hands of the recently departed Brendan Rodgers.
Martin O’Neill bought us time and positivity when we needed it most. But now we all need to move forward. Wilfried Nancy will play a huge part in that, but so too will those who hired him. With Celtic still in a state of flux on the pitch, the board need to stop avoiding the issues off it and tackle their problems with supporters head on.
We’re heading into a period of necessary instability on the playing side. But that does not mean that the chaos behind the scenes need continue.
Celtic are too big an institution to remain at the mercy of a few men too egotistical and too out of touch to understand the legitimate concerns of many fans, and address them respectfully.