Standing in the game is also a thing.
Gordon Strachan was a famous footballer who had won a European Cup Winners Cup and Scottish domestic trophies to beat the band and played for Manchester United and won the FA Cup and captained Leeds United to win the First Division title. He had managed Southampton to the FA Cup final. Nobody needed to ask “who are you?”
Brendan Rodgers lost his first game to Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar. But he had the fall back of having been the Liverpool manager who had come by far the closest to winning the Premier League two years previously. Nobody needed to ask who he was.
Some of the players might have needed to ask who Wim Jansen was, but Wim could tell them he had beaten Celtic in a European Cup final and played for Johan Cruyff’s Holland team in a World Cup final.
A lot of the players might have needed to ask who Ange was, but Ange could at least tell them he’d managed in the World Cup finals. Ange didn’t have the same disastrous start Nancy has had, and Ange’s personality immediately seemed a far better fit. People weren’t at all sure about Ange initially, but they soon enough came around because of that personality. He showed very quickly he “got” Celtic.
Martin O’Neill’s standing and his personality which could justify that standing was everything in his recent success.
All the players had to ask who Wilfried Nancy was. The initial gut feeling when he came in was that he did not “get” Celtic. He is an obvious ideologue and his ideology is failing.
We’ve already had the tactics board meme, we’ve already had the “I’m interested in performances rather than results” meme, we’ve already had Evan Ferguson say “their players didn’t know what they were doing”, today we had Nancy running along the line chasing after the play and shouting. That might look alright if you’re winning, if you’re losing it’s more optical poison.
He speaks in a very exaggerated French accent, almost Clouseauesque. Is it fair that that becomes a meme? Probably not, but it does, the same as Bob Bradley saying “sawker” became a meme.
Ronny Deila had a lot of the same problems. The perception was “Who is he? He seems like an ideologue” which became “he seems like a spoofer and he’s out of his depth personality wise”.
If you’re a nobody, and Deila and Nancy were nobodies, you’ve got to make your mark very quickly so that you become a somebody. Ange was able to do that but the first impressions of Nancy are already fatal for him.