{"id":204433,"date":"2025-12-22T02:19:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T02:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/204433\/"},"modified":"2025-12-22T02:19:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T02:19:09","slug":"nancy-welcomes-change-of-luck-at-celtic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/204433\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy welcomes change of luck at Celtic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wilfried Nancy welcomed the rub of the green which brought his first win as Celtic boss in a 3-1<\/a> victory over 10-man Aberdeen at Parkhead.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman was under intense pressure after starting his tenure with four straight defeats \u2013 by Hearts, Roma, St Mirren and Dundee United \u2013 but it eventually came good against the Dons.<\/p>\n

Midfielder Benjamin Nygren gave the hosts a 39th-minute lead and it got worse for the visitors just before the break when 20-year-old defender Dylan Lobban was shown a straight red card for a foul on Daizen Maeda.<\/p>\n

The sending-off followed a mistake by Aberdeen goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov, whose fine performance otherwise \u2013 as well as the woodwork \u2013 prevented a thrashing.<\/p>\n

Kenan Bilalovic equalised in the 74th minute, having come off the bench, but late goals from Keiran Tierney and substitute James Forrest moved the Hoops within six points of William Hill Premiership leaders Hearts with a game in hand over the Jambos.<\/p>\n

“I don’t believe in luck but since I\u2019ve been here I haven\u2019t had luck,” Nancy said.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s true because when we played Hearts, the way they scored the goal, and then after that against Roma we missed a penalty.<\/p>\n

“We have hit the post in almost every game, but the most important thing is the resilience of my players.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m really proud of what they did because they had so many big chances and suddenly against 10 men you concede a goal like this. Their heads could have gone down but they didn\u2019t. They kept attacking.<\/p>\n

“Attack, attack, attack, waves, waves, waves.<\/p>\n

“The two goals we scored were the reward for the grit and the resilience that they showed. The fact that we had lost so many games and they were still able to come back was something I really enjoyed seeing.”<\/p>\n

Former Columbus Crew head coach Nancy revealed he could have delayed his early December arrival to the Hoops\u2019 hot-seat, but wanted to assess his squad ahead of the January transfer window.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s why I came at this moment,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I could have come a little bit later but, with the club, we decided that it was the right moment because I needed time to assess the team and to evaluate.<\/p>\n

“If I was thinking [just] about myself maybe it could have been a little bit later, but the timing is the timing.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s why I accept all the things that have happened.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilfried Nancy welcomed the rub of the green which brought his first win as Celtic boss in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-204433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}