O’Neill shouldn’t have revealed as much about his brief meeting with Nancy according to one pundit
Martin O’Neill
Pat Bonner has told Martin O’Neill he put Wilfried Nancy under unnecessary pressure by revealing he only met the new boss for a 15-minute handover.
It’s been a disaster for Nancy at Celtic so far with results and performances regressing dramatically after O’Neill had steadied the ship. They won seven out of eight games in the legend’s interim tenure, but after four straight defeats since the Frenchman took the reins, fans are already calling for his head – and for O’Neill to wade in and save the day for a second time.
Speaking to talkSPORT after he left the club following their 1-0 win over Dundee, the 73-year-old said he only had a brief ’10-15 minute’ chat with Nancy – and would have spoken to him longer had the incoming boss wanted to. But he said the former Columbus Crew manager had his own ideas and felt it was important for him to do things his own way.
But he’s been heavily criticised for that by legendary keeper Bonner who told BBC Radio Scotland that he ‘shouldn’t even have gone there.’
He said: “I don’t think that helped (Nancy). I wouldn’t have said that if I had just left the job as a manager, and put it out in the public area that ‘I only sat down for 15 minutes’, even though he was in for a day.
Former Celtic keeper Pat Bonner(Image: SNS Group)
“Why say that? Why put him under more pressure? Even if it’s a fact. I wouldn’t have even gone there. Sorry.”
Speaking on the radio for the first time after his exit, O’Neill had stressed the need for Nancy to do things his own way, but would have imparted more wisdom had he asked for it.
He said: “The board asked me would I stay on and speak to the incoming manager. So my last game was on a Wednesday night against Dundee. I would have been flying back to London anyway on the Thursday but I stayed until later on.
“I met the incoming manager. He was very affable, very nice. It was only a 15-minute conversation. What can you make of anybody in that time?
“He’s got his own philosophy, his own viewpoint on the game and that is absolutely fine. I was not going to be coming in and giving him advice.
“I said very, very little. He would have seen the matches. I would have passed on anything that the incoming manager would have wanted to have heard from me. It’s as simple as that.
“He had his own view on players and that’s absolutely fine. What I would have given him is the thing that I thought was important, which is for him to bed in and put his own mark on the football club. That’s very, very important with the January window coming up and you’ve lost a couple of payers to the African Cup of Nations. The squad needs supplemented.”
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