What Wilfried Nancy was trying to do - significantly alter the side's style from day one - required a minimum of two things: buy-in from the players and instant results. Nancy wanted to play a certain way, in a certain formation regardless of whether he had players able turn his vision into a workable reality. Nancy was a record-breaker.
You can only achieve culture change if you take people with you.
What Wilfried Nancy was trying to do - significantly alter the side's style from day one - required a minimum of two things: buy-in from the players and instant results.
The reason the Frenchman is now the shortest serving permanent manager in the long history of the football club is that he clearly had neither.
In the end it all boiled down to yet another massive gamble from those running the club. A 33-day experiment - a grand leap of faith - which blew up in their faces in spectacular fashion.
Nancy wanted to play a certain way, in a certain formation regardless of whether he had players able turn his vision into a workable reality.
Rather than use what he had to the best of their ability, he tried to shoehorn round pegs into square holes and his defence, using the word loosely, wasn't able to stop conceding goals.
Nancy was a record-breaker. The first time a Celtic manager had ever lost their first two matches, never mind four. Six defeats from eight games all in.
The opportunity to win the season's first piece of silverware blown in the League Cup final after the interim manager had taken care of Rangers in the semis.
The other side of the city had its revenge over the weekend. A sweet, significant three points at the home of their bitter rivals. The final straw for a beleaguered, under-fire Celtic board who haven't just put Nancy out of his misery.
The club's head of football operations, Paul Tisdale, who had the connection to the Frenchman in the first place, has also been sacked.
Celtic fans have had several figures from the hierarchy in their sights lately. They've now watched chairman Peter Lawwell step back before the hasty departures of Tisdale and Nancy.
A penny for the thoughts of Michael Nicholson and Chris McKay, chief executive and chief finance officer respectively. A section of the support will view this as three down, two to go.
Of course, the clamour for the Celtic manager to be sacked had reached fever pitch. Seasoned football pundits confidently asserting Nancy was done prior to kick-off in the derby, others joining in once the dejected Frenchman trooped up the tunnel.
There was no coming back from another defeat. The optics and results were woeful. He took the momentum built up under Martin O'Neill's interim stewardship and flushed it down the toilet. Celtic's renewed confidence shredded in little over a month.
It's amazing to think it was only 3 December that Nancy officially swapped Columbus Crew and Major League Soccer for the Glasgow goldfish bowl, taking charge the following day. Eight chaotic matches later, and he's gone.
Those six defeats, and particularly the manner of the last one in the derby, rendered things unsustainable. His position long since untenable.
Prior to the two recent defeats against Motherwell and Rangers, he'd already spilled half of the available points in his first four Premiership outings and lost the League Cup to St Mirren. It turns out that is indeed a big enough sample size to warrant a sacking.
It's quite the embarrassment for a club already at odds with a large section of their own fanbase, furious with the board for the flawed recruitment of the past year and the failure, as they see it, to grow and progress following three consecutive years of Champions League football.
The curious thing in all this is that Celtic appeared to have stumbled on a successful formula immediately prior to Nancy getting the job.
A club veteran and favourite, O'Neill, winning seven out of eight, restoring confidence and hope and mentoring a potential new generation of Celtic coaches in Shaun Maloney, Mark Fotheringham and Stephen McManus.
It wasn't broken but Celtic decided to fix it. Do they now go back to O'Neill and ask him to do it all again?
Who'll sort out the recruitment side of things, with Celtic desperate for at least a couple of strikers and some fresh blood in a good few other positions as well?
The next few days should be absolutely fascinating in this most extraordinary of seasons in Scottish football.
Category: General Sports
