‘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?

According to Michael Nicholson, CEO of Celtic, “we have known about Wilfried and his high standard of work for a while.” When we began the selection process for a new manager, “He was our number one candidate.”

What precisely was the process? Who else spoke to Celtic? How thorough was the search? We are unsure. Who is the most popular candidate?

We do know that Paul Tisdale, Celtic’s director of football operations, and Kwame Ampadu worked together at Exeter City more than a dozen years ago.

Tisdale has come to be one of the most influential players at Celtic, appearing on a CV that lists stints at Bath, Exeter, MK Dons, Bristol Rovers, Colchester United, and Stevenage.

How ? We are again in the dark. There hasn’t been a chance to ask Tisdale anything because he doesn’t do interviews.

How thoroughly were Nancy’s credentials examined? Not nearly enough from this remove, which includes four games played, four games lost, three goals scored, and ten goals conceded.

No one knew that going from there to here would be a huge leap for Nancy, despite the fact that it would always be football-themed Grand Canyonesque.

What of the people who hired him? It’s understandable that some fans have turned against him because he appears in the wrong movie, making this slow-motion crash even more difficult to watch.

How about Tisdale? He is equally responsible for the sorry mess that is Nancy and Celtic. Even more so, perhaps.

Tisdale has a lot of influence over Celtic’s recruitment efforts, but in the end, he shies away from the attention of the fans who have focused on Dermot Desmond and the board’s members.

Of course, one of those boards is going to leave soon. At the end of the year, Peter Lawwell, a renowned clubman for 20 years, will step down due to abuse and threats from a sinister side of the family.

Lawwell has operated effectively for years, and he has done so consistently. It’s entirely different when his family becomes involved in it.

Celtics are currently trapped in a dark place. It requires some healing, compassion, and class rather than more zealot threats and incendiary statements from Desmond family members.

Nancy must be wondering what the heck he just entered, but it’s not difficult to feel sympathy for him. In his defense, there is some context in the aftermath of Tannadice, which he requested. Not much, but it’s a little.

Johnny Kenny and Daizen Maeda both had poor chances, which wasn’t Nancy’s fault.

Nancy is not to blame for Kenny’s lackadacity in leading the Celtics’ offense. Others far above him, who set up the club’s obscene transfer window in the summer, are responsible for this.

Alistair Johnston, Cameron Carter-Vickers, and Jota are missing from the new manager’s roster, but there is no evidence he would be able to extract the most from them, even if they weren’t hurt.

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.