New Celtic manager Wilfried Nancy hasn’t been probed much about his title hopes.<\/p>\n
Not really so much an oversight. More a realisation that the former Columbus Crew head coach’s priority is to actually win a game since taking over from interim manager Martin O’Neill.<\/p>\n
Four defeats in a row – having been the first Celtic manager to lose his first two in charge – and a large section of the Glasgow club’s fans are already calling for his dismissal.<\/p>\n
Rodgers resigned the day after that October defeat at Tynecastle, but veteran former Celtic manager O’Neill steadied the ship with only one defeat – in the Europa League – in his eight games in charge.<\/p>\n
Whether or not the Celtic hierarchy have regretted not keeping O’Neill in charge longer, they appear to be digging in, chief executive Michael Nicholson saying before Wednesday’s loss at Dundee United that the board was “absolutely solid” behind the Frenchman while reports that they considered sacking him afterwards were dismissed.<\/p>\n
O’Neill has hinted that Nancy did not spend much time mining his inside knowledge as the managerial baton was passed and the Frenchman seems determined to plough his own furrow, despite much criticism of his decision to ditch the four-man defence of his predecessors in favour of his own favoured three.<\/p>\n
Indeed, he has insisted he will continue experimenting with his Celtic players and approach in a bid to find a winning formula.<\/p>\n
Asked if he would make adjustments, Nancy replied: “I get the question, but if you watch all the games that we play, all the time I adjusted something.<\/p>\n
“The idea is not to stay still – we add improvements all the time. I have to change certain things to see players, but also see how I can adjust a few players, how I can mix players together.”<\/p>\n
Nancy acknowledged the criticism has been “difficult to accept personally” but realises “we are judged on results”.<\/p>\n
Having presided over Celtic’s longest losing streak since 1978, adding a fifth consecutive defeat for the first time since the 1952-53 season would mount further pressure on the Frenchman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Celtic manager Wilfried Nancy hasn’t been probed much about his title hopes. Not really so much an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-192276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}