{"id":224776,"date":"2026-01-03T06:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T06:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/224776\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T06:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T06:50:11","slug":"nancy-vows-to-fight-on-amid-early-tornado-at-celtic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/224776\/","title":{"rendered":"Nancy vows to fight on amid early &#8216;tornado&#8217; at Celtic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wilfried Nancy made an impassioned plea for time at Celtic ahead of the Old Firm clash with Rangers on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The Hoops boss is under enormous pressure with many fans calling for his head after the 2-0 defeat at Motherwell on Tuesday night left him with five defeats from his seven-game tenure to date.<\/p>\n<p>The former Columbus Crew boss has been accused of changing too much with the side since taking over from interim bosses Martin O&#8217;Neill and Shaun Maloney as Celtic sit three points ahead of their Glasgow neighbours and three behind league leaders Hearts.<\/p>\n<p>At his pre-match media conference at the club&#8217;s Lennoxtown training ground, Nancy insisted &#8220;the board is with me, the club is with me and the players are with me&#8221;, and also asked for the context of his late arrival to be considered.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;I know that your job is to attack me or to ask me a lot of questions. No problem with that. This is your job. But again, this is only the beginning.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Usually, we have four weeks of pre-season, four, five. I didn&#8217;t have a pre-season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The reality is, before I came, I knew that if I don&#8217;t win games, I&#8217;m going to be in trouble. Because this is part of the job. OK. But I&#8217;m pleased to be here.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s why I said at the Motherwell game that I&#8217;m not an underdog, I want my team to compete against any team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I knew that this kind of situation happened. So now, as you know, I need time.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know that I don&#8217;t have time, because this is the way it is in my job.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - DECEMBER 14: Celtic's Reo Hatate (R) and Manager Wilfried Nancy look dejected at full time during a Premier Sports Cup Final match between St Mirren and Celtic at Barclays Hampden, on December 14, 2025, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Photo by Paul Devlin\/SNS Group via Getty Images)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0023a047-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nWilfried Nancy saw his side lose his first four matches in charge<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, yes, I want to ask you, give me time, and you see my team.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You are going see what I&#8217;m going to do, because you can see already what I did before, because I didn&#8217;t start (coaching) yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And when you see fans and people are not happy, and me too, I&#8217;m not happy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Because I see only a few glimpses of learning, but I&#8217;m pleased with that because we have only had 12 or 13 (training) sessions. This is the context.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s totally normal that you guys, you kill me. I&#8217;m fine with that. Because I know where I want to go.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Judge me in few weeks, months? But if you want to judge me now, you can do it, because it&#8217;s a fact that we didn&#8217;t have the results that we wanted. I cannot deny that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But do your job, look about the way I am as a coach and what I want to bring for the team, and you will see that we are not there yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Nancy continued: &#8220;A few players have been here for five, six, seven years. They were doing certain things in a certain way. No kidding that it takes time. Guys, seriously. I&#8217;m going to be a liar if I say everything&#8217;s happy. Everything is good. No. This is not the case.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am not pleased to hear that people don&#8217;t like me and so on.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They have the right to say it because in terms of results, this is not what we want.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I know that we cannot be patient in this job, but you&#8217;re going to be able to see what I can do. Not I. My team, my players. But for a moment, this is a tornado.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m ready for that. So this is my message for everyone. This is the reality. It&#8217;s totally normal that my players need a bit of time.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilfried Nancy made an impassioned plea for time at Celtic ahead of the Old Firm clash with Rangers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-224776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224776","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=224776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}