Our man has his say on the crisis engulfing the accident prone Frenchman after Saturday’s derby defeatContent cannot be displayed without consent
This is all new to Wilfried Nancy and it’s most probably bordering on the bewildering for Celtic’s accident prone new manager.
But, for those of us who have been here before, it’s beginning to look a lot like yet another re-run of the same old horror movie.
It’s always a wholly unedifying spectacle. Whenever one of Glasgow’s football monsters swallows up a well meaning newcomer and spits them back out in a bloodied, traumatised mess, it makes for an uncomfortable watch.
And the tell tale signs of what is to come are unfailingly familiar.
The descent into out and out chaos is rarely a gradual affair. On the contrary, it usually happens at break neck speed.
And it begins when people start attempting to defend what is blatantly indefensible.
In Nancy’s case, he’s trying to defend without deploying any defence at all which, granted, certainly makes him unique and something of an outlier.
But the pattern remains the same regardless.
For Pedro Caixinha, the alarm bell moment first arrived just six games into his catastrophic short stint in charge of Rangers in 2017.
When Caixinha began fumbling around with glass tumblers on a table top inside Hampden, in an attempt to justify his mystifying tactical approach during an abysmal performance in a 2-0 Old Firm Scottish Cup defeat, presenting himself like the Nutty Professor.
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND – OCTOBER 22: Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha is seen during the Betfred League Cup Semi Final between Rangers and Motherwell at Hampden Park on October 22, 2017 in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
A doomed experiment of an appointment and a man so blinded by denial that he was clearly destined to blow himself up in the lab with his own bunsen burner.
More recently, it was over for Russell Martin this season pretty much from the day he faced the cameras and made the preposterous claim that the reason the fans were turning on him was because of his long hair and centre parting.
Yes, the Caixinha calamity was extended into the following season before the axe fell after 229 days. Martin managed just 123.
But there was never likely to be any way back for either of them from the moment the first cracks became so obvious and so highly visible.
Which is why Nancy was straying on to the most dangerous of territory on Friday afternoon when he lost his cool along with his composure in a highly charged pre-match press conference ahead of the latest derby between these feuding neighbours.
Nancy first appeared to bristle in his seat when asked if it might be the time for him to consider changing his formation on the back of a run which had seen Celtic slump to five defeats from his first seven games.
The Frenchman’s irritation built from that moment and peaked with an extraordinary seven minute monologue during which he blamed almost everyone but himself for the fact the champions have forgotten how to function as an effective unit since his own arrival.
When these same, glaring defensive frailties were exposed the following afternoon and a mediocre Rangers side romped to a 3-1 win on the other side of town, Nancy didn’t merely turn his back and trudge straight up the Parkhead tunnel. He began walking the Green Mile.
It’s now impossible to see how this ends in any other way than the obligatory execution.
Of course, Dermot Desmond might double down for a while, as Celtic’s principal shareholder is prone to do whenever the club’s support becomes an unruly and mutinous bunch. Desmond is not a man to be dictated to. Billionaires rarely are.
(Image: Getty Images)
So the chances are that he will stick stubbornly to his guns and allow Nancy and head of football operations Paul Tisdale to navigate their way through the January transfer window.
It was Tisdale who came up with the idea of appointing Nancy from the MLS but it was Desmond who gave it his blessing.
The optics around giving into the demands of a rebelling fan base, conducting a reverse ferret and bagging the pair of them will not sit comfortably at all with the Irishman’s ego.
In any case, Nancy has already been given one new signing to tool up for the second half of the campaign after Julian Araujo arrived on loan from Bournemouth. And more new arrivals are in the pipeline.
So it seems
Perhaps it might be time then for Desmond to instruct Tisdale to sit Nancy down and ask him the very question which seemed to get his fuse smouldering the other day.
Because he cannot be allowed to carry on regardless if the end results remain the same and Nancy’s single handedly torpedoes whatever chance Celtic still have of holding onto their beloved league title.
Strong principles are all well and good. But when the refusal to dilute them means doing harm to the greater good, it begins to look like sheer, inexcusable selfishness.
That’s where Nancy is at now. That’s why the tolerance levels of the Celtic support have already been exhausted and it’s why the relationship between the manager and these fans is likely to become even more toxic and incendiary than it already is.
At the very least, Tisdale might throw an arm around his man and advise Nancy to show some sort of flexibility if not before then at the very least during however many matches he might have left.
Because his repeated failure to identify or to respond and adapt to what the man in the opposite dugout is doing is biting Celtic all over the backside.
It happened again on Saturday when Danny Rohl made necessary changes to a Rangers team which had performed woefully throughout a one sided first half.
It wasn’t one sided because Celtic were as outstanding as some have made out. No, for the most part, the home side was able to dominate proceedings because their rivals had failed to turn up.
And because Rohl had got his selection and formation badly wrong.
But the German worked it out for himself, removed Thelo Aasgaard from his role as an empty shirt, replaced the Norwegian enigma with Mohamed Diomande and rebalanced his entire midfield.
By deploying Diomande, Nico Raskin and Connor Barron as a three man line, Rohl not only beefed up the numbers in the middle of the pitch and also allowed Mikey Moore to get further up the pitch and into meaningful areas.
The very areas of the pitch which Nancy’s Celtic leave so exposed.
Of course, the Parkhead boss might argue that the three goals his side conceded were down to individual errors and nothing whatsoever with his own system or instructions.
But when those instructions leave Auston Trusty attempting to defend against waves of attacks almost on his own then surely the manager should be quick witted enough to act and take responsibility.
On Saturday the pragmatic Rohl owned his mistakes and did something about correcting them while Nancy’s head remained stuck in the clouds.
It’s tempting to suggest things can’t go on like this. But history shows that they can. If only for a while at least.