Why Wilfried Nancy and Celtic should ignore the noise and stick to his guns

If he has one, it’s probably best that Wilfried Nancy deletes his twitter account.

After a tough start to his Celtic career Ohio must seem like a world away.

In terms of expectation, it’s another planet.

It was to be expected that the Frenchman’s philosophical conversational style would be picked apart.

Talk of performance over results was unsurprising, taken out of context and weaponised.

Again, all very predictable.

What was surprising to see was the trivial use of a tactics board causing such frivolity.

Mainstream journalists had there headlines written for them, opposition fans had it clipped for memes.

The level of parochialism has been unrivalled.

How dare he come to Celtic with a visual aid to coach players?

Doesn’t he know this is Scotland?

For a country with such a poor international record and European co-efficient, our arrogance is astounding.

Pep Guardiola uses tactics boards, as do all the best coaching teams in the world.

It’s a tool to illustrate shape and instruction.

In all likelihood, he won’t have to use it in a few weeks.

Once his players are familiar with the general themes, players will know to switch formation with a simple hand gesture or shout from the side lines.

After only two training sessions, it’s perfectly reasonable to use everything at your disposal.

Celtic also scored and created their best chance after the instructed charge.

The thread below demonstrates this well.

Value in Visuals as a Coach

We have all had a laugh at the Tactics Board but in reality the advantages in showing visuals were clear from the 2 adjustments made against Hearts.

1st Adjustment on Tactic Board:
> Switched to a Front-2
> Abandoned WB's in favour of Wingers
>… pic.twitter.com/FgYS0gv5nM

— John Walker (@johnwalker_1986) December 9, 2025

Many will grumble that the new Celtic boss changed things too early.

If not now, then when?

Games are coming think and fast and there’s little time to coach this incrementally.

There’s no better practice than the real thing and the manager and his players will learn more from this one game, than training sessions could ever teach.

There’s also been much conjecture about him departing from the plan, that won 7 of the previous 8 games.

Why appoint anyone at all if we were just going to continue with the same instructions?

We could have whipped someone out of the concourse kiosks and put a tracksuit on them, if that way the case.

Nancy has to remain steadfast and stick to his guns.

Stubbornness isn’t generally an endearing quality.

On this occasion though it will serve him well.

To change tactics now would, confuse players and would point to a manager who is sending mixed signals.

In much the same way as Ange Postecoglou, he’ll need to be resolute, trusting the process with blind faith.

The Australian lost 3 of his first 6 league fixtures before eventually implementing his tactics to great success.

Up next it’s Roma tonight.

It’s certainly a tougher test than Hearts and the hope is that players have learned from their mistakes.

Now that the dust has settled though and having watched it back, Celtic wouldn’t have been fortunate to win on Sunday.

Hearts’ goals came from nothing, against the run of play.

The statistics here on Fotmob back this up.

There were promising signs in the first half hour.

As we knew already, we are short of quality in attacking positions and ultimately, this told in the end.

It’s up to Nancy to find solutions to this until January.

At that point he’ll have the opportunity to sign a striker comfortable in this shape and able to bring the 10s into the game.

There’s a lot of storm to navigate before we reach this point though.

Short term pain for long term gain may be the way this works.

Chopping, changing and tinkering will only cause more confusion.