WILFRIED NANCY SHOWS A SIDE BRENDAN RODGERS NEVER COULD AS CELTIC MANAGER
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 22 hours ago
- 3 min read
“Hey, we all make mistakes” said the Dalek said as he dismounted the wheelie bin.
In all seriousness though, our world today would be a much better place if people could just own up to their own mistakes, show some contrition and ask for advice on how to improve.
Thankfully, in his pre-Cup Final press interviews, Wilfried Nancy appears prepared to do just that. He showed us a side that we never saw with Brendan Rodgers: humility and the ability to admit when you might not be 100% right all of the time. He also expressed a willingness to listen to his players and alter his approach based on this feedback.
Humility is an Essential Quality for Long Term Success at Celtic: Wilfried Nancy Knows That Now
I don’t mean this to sound harsh to Brendan Rodgers, he delivered us incredible levels of domestic success, and a little bit of European progression too during his 2 spells as Celtic manager.
However, there is no denying he had an ego, and in the end that ego damaged Celtic and probably his own standing too, if and when he decides to re-enter management.
Wilfried Nancy said ahead of today’s League Cup Final: "It takes time. When you try to learn something, it’s difficult.
“I knew that before I signed and this is the adversity I knew I would face.
“Now what is good is with my group, we have open discussions regarding everything; the system, the way we play, the way we attack, the way we defend.
“Because I want them to also feel good regarding what we want to do.”
The manager continued: “Now we’re going to try to do it step by step, knowing that I have to slow down everything that I want to do.”
So there you have it, an admission that Wilfried Nancy sees that he may have been a bit too hasty in pushing onward with a new and relatively unfamiliar play style to what the current Celtic players are accustomed to.
Yet he has the humility and self-awareness to slow things down to adjust. Particularly in the final few months of his tenure, Brendan Rodgers came under intense scrutiny for being unable or unwilling to do the same.
Ultimately, it was that inflexibility, that unbending adherence to 4-3-3, no matter how bad the performances got, that cost him his job.
I don’t think Wilfried Nancy is going to rip up his formation completely for today’s game. To do so after only 2 games would be just as jarring for the players, if not more so, than when they first adopted the system last week against Hearts.
I do expect certain tweaks to be made though. Nancy also said that had Kelechi Iheanacho been ready to start on Thursday, he would have. Certainly, the big Nigerian showed enough in the second half against Roma to warrant a start if he is up to it.
Likewise, I expect Daizen Maeda to move out to the left at the expense of Sebastian Tounekti. The Algerian international has struggled of late after making a promising start to his Celtic career. Perhaps its best he sits today out and come back in January after the African Nations Cup, hopefully with a fresh impetus for his Celtic career.
In any case, the performance really isn’t important today, what is essential, however, is a win. The tabloid guff about Nancy being the first Celtic manager to lose his first 2 games in charge, was debunked almost as quickly as it emerged on Friday morning.
However, the best way to silence critics is to put trophies in the cabinet. Very few managers get the chance to do so in only their third match in charge. Wilfried Nancy has the chance to do just that today, and ruin many a Scottish football pundit’s weekend in the process!
