‘Questions pile up at Celtic, but only some are for Nancy’

At this point, it’s not just Wilfried Nancy’s Celtic team that’s a hard watch, it’s Nancy himself.

So many explanations and justifications, so many verbal contortions as he attempts to talk through his latest defeat. It’s become painful, quickly.

“I think I am in a good direction with the players”, he said after his fourth defeat in a row in his new job, a 2-1 loss at struggling Dundee United.

“Today you saw we had a good performance”, he stated. “We are improving”, he insisted. “We were close to winning… keep the faith”.

All around him now there are football atheists. There really can’t be many believers left. As Nancy spoke, it was hard to avoid wincing and wincing and wincing again.

As he made his way through his post-match assessment, the temptation was to shout, ‘ Stop… stop talking… stop explaining because when you’re explaining, you’re losing, again’.

The bottom line in all of this is that between his nightmarish beginning with Celtic and his low-key ending with Columbus Crew, Nancy has won just three of his past 16 games as a manager.

The defeats by United, St Mirren, Roma and Hearts now joined the ones that went before in America – Cincinnati (twice), Chicago Fire, New York City and New England Revolution.

Nancy finished seventh in the regular season in MLS, won 14 of 34 games, ranking joint sixth in the league for goals scored and eighth for goals conceded. After being manager of the season the year before, it was all very blah.

There are questions here. Many of them. Is he already doomed? If not, how long has he got? Celtic host Aberdeen on Sunday. Can he survive if he loses again? How many is too many? Five? Six? Seven?

And, given his humdrum season with Columbus Crew, how did Nancy get this job in the first place? Arguably, that’s the biggest question of all. He’d been a manager at Montreal and Columbus for a total of four years – then he’s given the Celtic job?

“We have been aware of Wilfried and his quality of work for some time”, said Michael Nicholson, Celtic’s chief executive. “He was our number one candidate when we began the process of appointing a new manager…”

What, exactly, was that process? Who else did Celtic talk to? How rigorous was their search? We don’t know. The number one candidate?

What we do know is that Nancy had Kwame Ampadu as his assistant in Columbus and that Ampadu and Celtic’s director of football operations, Paul Tisdale, worked together at Exeter City more than a dozen years ago.

On the back of a CV that shows spells at Bath, Exeter, MK Dons, Bristol Rovers, Colchester United and Stevenage, Tisdale has become a very significant figure at Celtic, one of the most influential characters in the place.

How? Again, we’re in the dark. Tisdale does not do interviews so there has been no chance to ask him anything.

How thoroughly were Nancy’s credentials interrogated? From this remove – four games played, four games lost, three goals scored and 10 goals conceded – not thoroughly enough.

From there to here was always going to be a mighty leap for Nancy, but nobody knew it was going to be Grand Canyonesque in a footballing sense.

It’s understandable that sections of the fans have turned on him – he seems like a good man in the wrong movie, which makes this crash in slow motion all the harder to observe – but what of the people who appointed him?

What of Tisdale? He is as much to blame for the sorry mess that Celtic are in as Nancy is. More so, even.

Tisdale has powerful sway over the recruitment work that Celtic do and yet, in the main, he escapes the heat of the fans who have been fixated on principal shareholder Dermot Desmond and members of the board.

One of that board is leaving soon, of course. Peter Lawwell, a titan of the club for two decades, will depart at the end of the year, citing abuse and threats from a sinister element in the support that have impacted his family.

Lawwell is a big enough operator to take stick on the chin, as he has done for years. When his family are drawn into it then it’s another matter entirely.

Celtic are in a dark place right now. Instead of more threats from zealots and incendiary statements from members of the Desmond family, it needs some healing, some understanding and some class.

Nancy must be wondering what the hell he’s walked into and it’s not hard to have some sympathy for him. He asked for context in the aftermath of Tannadice and, in his defence, there is some. Not a lot, but a little.

It wasn’t Nancy’s fault that Johnny Kenny missed an easy chance or that Daizen Maeda spurned a sitter.

The blame for having the inexperienced Kenny leading the Celtic line is not on Nancy. It lies with others way above him – the ones who orchestrated the club’s slapstick transfer window in the summer.

The new manager is missing key players in Alistair Johnston, Cameron Carter-Vickers and Jota, but there is no evidence that he would get the best out of them even if they weren’t injured.

He hasn’t gotten the most out of the players he has had in four games. Nothing quite like it. Most of them have retreated amid a haze of tactical and selectorial confusion.

Once more, Celtic lost its relevance at Tannadice during the second half. Another opponent exploited weakness once more and abused it. Nancy was repeatedly undercoached.

Nancy approaches performance in the manner of a mature man. He doesn’t, though. No matter how it turns out, winning is the unalienable truth of his job.

If Nancy had spent more than 15 minutes picking the brains of a man who is better than anyone else, Martin O’Neill would have clarified that point.

Given that the interim manager is a man at a new club in a new league on a new continent, it seems as though Nancy had a pass on the opportunity to find out.

It’s unclear how long the answer will last. Nancy is already on borrowed time, according to logic, but it doesn’t seem to be prevalent at the club right now.

On and off the pitch, strange things are happening. Aberdeen are also coming over the weekend, smelling blood and sniffing points. Now, there is no fear factor.