No Plan, No Structure, No Hope: The Shambles that is Wilfried Nancy’s Celtic

Hampden humiliation, tactical chaos and a furious support – the Nancy project has torched Celtic’s season in a matter of days. This is not a transition, it’s an implosion.

Wilfried Nancy is finished as Celtic manager after just eleven days in the job, and the only decision left for this under-fire Celtic board is how quickly they admit their latest screw up has detonated a season that was there to be salvaged.

The appointment of Nancy was sold as progressive, visionary and bold, yet within three competitive games it has been brutally exposed as the reckless whim of a hierarchy more interested in protecting its own egos and bank balance than protecting Celtic’s standards.

What was supposed to be a new era of tactical sophistication and modern coaching has instead given the support the worst possible combination: a manager out of his depth, a squad who don’t have a clue what they are doing, and a hierarchy so wedded to its own narrative that it would rather watch trophies slip away while counting the money in the vault than concede it called this one disastrously wrong.

Out of his depth

Three games, three defeats, and a 3–1 humiliation by St Mirren at Hampden is not a transition period – it is a flashing neon sign that says the job is far too big for him. That he is out of his depth. Hearts are ahead of Celtic in the league, Roma have sauntered through the Europa League tie against us with ease, and Hampden – a stage where proper Celtic managers impose themselves with dominance of the domestic cups – just watched a disorganised, clueless side lose 3-1 to a well drilled St.Mirren side who were well organised and executed their game plan perfectly - while riding their luck on occasions.​

The three-at-the-back vanity project of Nancy’s is parody. It didn’t work in game one against Hearts, it didn’t work in game two against Roma, and it has now delivered a national final where Celtic’s defensive shape resembled a pre-season bounce game rather than a professional football club looking to defend their League Cup trophy. The players quite visibly do not know their roles: centre-backs pinned too narrow, wing-backs caught in no-man’s land, midfielders unsure whether to press, screen, attack, and no strikers of note on show – it is tactics by whiteboard, not by experience.​

Shape without structure, ideas without instruction

Modern football is about patterns of play drilled until they become instinct. Under Nancy, Celtic show none of that. The build-up is slow, predictable and sterile, with no clear plan to break blocks other than hoping talented individuals “figure it out” on the park. Off the ball, there is even less: pressing triggers are inconsistent, distances between the lines open like a concertina, and every transition looks like a potential concession.​ And yet Nancy claims the system isn’t the problem - piling the blame on the players. Not a good sign for a manager so early in the door.

The League Cup final was not a tactical blip; it was the logical end point of a manager trying to transplant an MLS-friendly 3-4-3 into a league where opponents thrive on chaos, physicality and punishing slackness. St Mirren were gifted space between and in behind Celtic’s back three all afternoon, and only wasteful finishing in the opening spell stopped the score line from becoming utterly grotesque before half-time.​

St Mirren earned that trophy

St Mirren deserved their win. They carried out a coherent game plan from minute one aggressive early press, targeted balls into zones Celtic couldn’t defend, and ruthless exploitation of the structural gaps Nancy created for them. Yes, Celtic missed a pile of chances – but so did St Mirren, especially in the frantic first 20 minutes when the back three and the goalkeeper looked as if they had met in the tunnel for the first time.​

What separates a serious manager from a pretender is the ability to adapt when the script goes wrong. Nancy doubled down. Even as the flanks were being ripped open and the three centre-backs were being dragged into channels, there was no meaningful change of structure, no shift to shore up the middle or get an extra body screening counters. St Mirren weren’t just braver – they were smarter, better coached and more in tune with their manager’s demands than Celtic’s players are with theirs.​

A crisis born long before Hampden

This disaster did not begin with the failure to pick up an opponent at a set piece, leaving an attacker free to run onto the ball, or a missed sitter at Hampden; it began with a summer window that screamed arrogance from the Celtic boardroom. Champions League qualification was botched yet again, against Kairat Almaty, and the response was a scattergun spree that produced the likes of Sebastian Tounekti and Michel-Ange Balikwisha to the tune of £10 million [£10 million too much for the pair of them] while still failing to replace key attackers in Nicolas Kuhn and Kyogo with proven, ready-made quality signings.

The figures tell their own story - millions of pounds worth of investment tied up in players who are projects that are not good enough to be project players at the club rather than plug-and-play starters, while the core of the team is visibly weaker than in previous seasons. The club looked at the loss of a top-level forward like Kyogo and an established wide option like Kuhn and decided timelines, balance sheets and resale curves mattered more than ensuring the manager – any manager – had the tools to compete to the best of the club’s ability this season.​

There is no coming back from that for this board.

Board under siege – and it’s deserved

The Celtic support did not need a third straight defeat under Nancy to know this board is out of touch. Boycotts of club merchandise and visible protests have already exposed the depth of mistrust between the stands and the so-called club custodians.

If the board thought that anger had peaked, watching Hampden turn into a sea of disillusionment will be a rude awakening. Empty seats at Celtic Park are no longer some abstract threat; they are the obvious next escalation from a support that has already reached for financial pressure as its only effective language. This board behaves like an accountancy firm that happens to own a football club, more comfortable boasting about tax paid and cash reserves than building a squad fit for the demands placed on the badge.​

Celtic under Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell is not a Football Club.

Nepotism at the heart of football operations

Nothing about Nancy’s appointment suggested a ruthless global search for the best-possible football manager to take this squad to new heights. It reeked of networking, internal alliances and comfort-zone thinking inside a football department already plagued by cronyism. The links between Nancy and Paul Tisdale were well-trailed even before a ball was kicked in his first game; this never felt like a meritocratic, data-driven hire, it felt like a friends list on Facebook hire rubber-stamped by a hierarchy desperate to bring in a replacement to Rodgers but someone who could work within their tight financial constraints - who better than an MLS coach who worked with a wage cap.

Meanwhile, there are credible, modern coaches with European experience – including those like Kjetil Knutsen at Bodø/Glimt – who were potential successors yet never seriously pursued. Instead of keeping interim boss and club legend Martin O’Neill to the end of the season to steady the ship after he demonstrated he could get a tune out of this squad, Celtic chose to torpedo their own momentum mid-season in order to push through their man and get the succession narrative back on track - in time for the three biggest games of the season so far.​​

If that doesn’t scream amateur hour I don’t know what does. Do you?

Recruitment shambles and the “football doctor”

Paul Tisdale’s record in the market so far is every bit as alarming as Nancy’s on the touchline. Transfer after transfer looks overpriced relative to output, with the core gripe from fans being that too many signings simply aren’t Celtic quality. When a head of football operations presides over a window where a plethora of players arrive, the Champions League is still missed, and the team looks palpably weaker in key areas, questions are not just fair – they are essential.​

The departure of the Head of Scouting to Swansea only underscores how unstable and unconvincing the current football structure is. Layer onto that the continued presence of familiar surnames in key analytical and scouting roles – individuals whose main qualification in the eyes of many supporters is their parentage or who they know rather than their track record – and you have a model that looks more like a closed-shop fiefdom than a high-performance department. When that same group fails to properly follow up on clearly talented players who then explode onto the scene, it is not bad luck – it is poor judgement.​​

A board allergic to ambition

Every major strategic decision from this board points in the same direction - protect the cash mountain, take minimal sporting risk, and hope the domestic environment is forgiving enough to get away with it. The club has repeatedly preferred announcing strong financials and hefty tax payments to discussing why, in a year of relative opportunity, the squad was allowed to be trimmed, diluted or left blatantly incomplete.​

This is a group of bankers, accountants and lawyers treating Celtic as an asset class rather than a cultural and sporting institution. They overpay for the wrong profiles, refuse to market price when real difference-makers are needed, and then talk about sustainability while serving up regression on the pitch and failure in Europe. The message to the support is unmistakeable: be grateful for domestic success, forget about pushing the boundaries, and stop expecting the club to act like the giant it claims to be.​

No way back for Nancy

At some clubs, three early defeats would earn patience and perspective. Especially in the bubble that is the MLS. Celtic is not one of those clubs – and this particular sequence is not remotely normal. No previous Celtic manager in the history of the club has ever opened with three straight defeats, including a major final, yet here we are with Nancy already rewriting the record book for all the wrong reasons.​

Losing a League Cup final can happen. Losing it 3–1 to St Mirren after already surrendering home points to title rivals and being schooled in Europe, all while stubbornly clinging to a failing tactical template, is a different matter altogether. Every side in the country will now fancy their chances; Dundee United at Tannadice in midweek, under Jim Goodwin will be relishing the prospect of facing a Celtic side that looks mentally and structurally broken.​

Yet all we hear from Nancy post-match is how everyone needs to ‘respect’ the process and once it clicks it will come good. Respect is earned not given freely, and you’ve earned nothing at Celtic to justify any hint of respect.

Speaking to Premier Sports, following the Celtic fans visibly angry at the defeat, he said: “I understand that, but the reality is that I have to respect the process too. Obviously we want to win games but at the moment we are missing certain things.

“To be able to be more dangerous inside the box and also to concede less goals. This is something that we’re going to have to work on.

“We’ve not had a lot of time to work because we’ve been playing many games. So we have to stick to that and I’m pretty sure that when it clicks, it’s going to be good.

“But for the moment this is the reality that we are in. The three games that we’ve had, the only thing that I know is to help the players and find a solution. I’m confident of that.

“It’s a tough one. The reality is in the last three games we’ve conceded goals from a set piece. and we have to come back from behind all the time. On that, we have to be a little bit better.”

So despite losing three games in a row using his MLS system, that has failed domestically and in Europe - he is sticking to his guns and hoping to ride the waves of discontent. Clearly, the post-match drug testers need to knock on the manager’s door and ask him to piss in the cup after those comments.

Crisis is not a headline – it’s reality

We hate to see it, and we have seen it plenty of times in the Scottish mainstream media, the cracked Celtic crest. But this season, it is well and truly cracked on and off the park. This is what crisis really looks like - a manager who does not understand the league or the club, players visibly confused by his instructions, a recruitment model that is woefully inadequate, and a boardroom insulated by its own sense of superiority. Whether anyone likes cracked crest graphics or not, there is no escaping the truth that Celtic are in a full-blown crisis this season and under Wilfried Nancy we are gifting Hearts the title and potentially throwing away second place to the likes of Motherwell and Rangers in 3rd and 4th respectively. In fact, there is a real risk of Celtic freefalling down the league - all the while the fans are told to sit down, shut up, and respect the process. I’m sorry Nancy but you can shove your process.

Clearly Nancy cannot survive the next 24 hours in the job. Sacking him will not fix everything – not when the core disease lies in the boardroom and the nepotistic, small-time thinking that put him there within Football Operations – but it would at least be an admission that this latest experiment has failed catastrophically, and that the club might, finally, be ready to put football back in the hands of real football people.

Wishful thinking indeed.