New Celtic Manager, Wilfried Nancy, has shoe-horned himself into a strong position ahead of Christmas and, unwillingly, the chiefs at Celtic have enabled this pantomime to play out.
The festive period is a time of fairytale and dreams. It is a time when realities hide and festive cheer dominate. But In the mahogany-lined walls of the Celtic-Park boardroom, this Christmas dream has quickly turned into an unfathomable nightmare.
The once Scottish-football powerhouse has found itself embroiled in the script of something you’d see at the King’s Theatre and is now a shadow of the tight ship Dermot Desmond used to run and Celtic used to be.
As every manager has passed, they’ve descended further into civil war between the supremos in the leather seats and the paying punters waking up hoarse on the Monday morning after a match weekend–with a brief ceasefire initiated by the talismanic Martin O’Neill. This club is in a mess and you don’t really need to look far to find out why or what their current predicament is.
To anyone who has followed football, it is blatantly obvious that Wilfried Nancy is out his depth, but why is this a surprise? It shouldn’t be a surprise. As recently as six years ago Wilfried Nancy was managing an under 16’s women’s team, and whilst this isn’t a reflection of his managerial capability, it is a reflection of his managerial experience and his qualification to take on one of the most intense jobs in European football management.
Judging a manager on three games is neither fair nor reasonable. Judging a boards decision on three games is fair and reasonable–especially given they handed Nancy the keys to Lennoxtown. Sacking Wilfried Nancy three games in, despite the gravity of those games, isn’t conceivable at this moment. Martin O’Neill himself said that he could’ve lost those games in a recent interview with TalkSport, “Could’ve” being the key quote there, ‘unlikely’ being far more probable. If the Celtic board were to act now and kick Nancy out of Celtic Park, this wouldn’t be seen as a failure on Nancy, it would be seen as a failure by the Celtic board.
At the top of this article we said Nancy had “Engineered himself into an unsackable position”, and this point remains. Nancy cannot be sacked because it would trigger resignations and terminations of the decision makers at Celtic. If they were to fire the manager they have just appointed after three games, it is unfathomable to see how their own positions are tenable. Have they made such an ill-informed decision that they are now backtracking three games in, and at such huge cost to the club?
If this was a game of chess at Celtic Park, the Celtic board have made a serious error in their most recent move. Nancy is one move away from a checkmate, and now the board must look at sacrificing their queen to stay in the game.
All that is left to see now is how long the supremos can keep moving around the board delaying the inevitable.
