It’s surely a mixture of Wilf’s first win last weekend along with Christmas slowdown & no midweek fixture, but things are relatively calm at Celtic for the first time in (?) months. I like the Football Cliches Twitter account & I’m not repeating them in a similarly sarcastic manner…but I thought he spoke well at yesterday’s press conference. He was relaxed, assured, engaging & dealt with a few curveballs nicely. The players also looked happier in the training clips & the body language was positive. Maybe peace has broken out at Celtic this Christmas? Feeling cautiously optimistic now but reserve the right to delete this post should Livingston successfully bombard the Celtic defence with long balls & throws on Saturday.
Meadowbank Thistle are a distant bottom of the table. Should be a doddle.
A lot depends on getting to January 3rd unscathed, and then if that happens, on January 3rd itself.
Even with two wins between now and then, if Celtic get a tanking that day he’s right back in the shit.
Before that there’s tough trip to Motherwell on the 30th. Motherwell have to go to Ibrox on December 27th with Celtic playing on the 26th so Celtic should have an advantage going to Fir Park.
Motherwell will be bona fide title contenders if they win the two of those.
Celtic are playing on the 27th too. A full round of fixtures that day, starting with the Edinburgh derby from Easter Road that lunchtime. Motherwell are playing an expansive, passing, building out from the back, style under their German manager. They throughly outplayed Celtic at Celtic Park in Oct/Nov but lost 3-2 to a Maeda injury time goal. The game changing goal came at 1-2 when their keeper did a Paul Durcan 2014 AIF final under no pressure to Nygren. I sometimes find teams struggle playing the OLD FIRM back to back but Motherwell could be different.
I wonder are there any Motherwell fans still alive who would remember their lone league title win in 1932.
Fir Park has historically been somewhat of an unhappy hunting ground for Celtic.
With the Scottish diet in mind, I’d expect not. Wouldn’t be surprised if their life expectancy resembled that of a country in a protracted war.
Motherwell has never recovered from the closure of Ravenscraig.
A worthy late addition to Lawwell’s epitaph, fans now wary of Motherwell
The remorseless content creation machine that is Celtic FC 2025/26 rolls on.
Coach Wilfried NANCY won’t make a successful football manager but he would be an Oscar winner if he turned his hand to the oul’ acting.
This is astonishing, Hollywood level CONTENT.
Prediction for tomorrow’s game: Celtic 0 Rangers 4.
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Longer clip.
Coach NANCY has an outstanding skill where you can’t help but be deeply endeared by his delivery while simultaneously thinking he’s a complete nutcase.
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His answer to the first press conference question was 7 (seven) minutes long.
3 points off the top
Do we think it’s a slam dunk they’ll announce O’Neill & Maloney until the end of the season now?
O’Neill is a Celtic legend but he’s an obstinate character & might have taken offence at being cast aside for Wilf, albeit he was under no illusions about it being an interim role. It’s just when it was going so well & they still said thank you & good luck. He might think…fuck they’re in a worse state now than they were the last time they called & he may wonder if he needs the hassle at 73.
It could be Maloney with Fozzy, McManus & the rest of the crew bar O’Neill.
Who knows? Could they surprise everyone with a separate new permanent manager? A different candidate entirely…but I’d expect it’ll be O’Neill & Maloney when push comes to shove.
I was wondering if Desmond being so vindictive towards the supporters might see him retain Wilf but I reckon the player dissent & how they clearly weren’t playing for him & thought he was a clown must have been the deciding factor.
At least that charlatan Tisdale is gone too.
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@Fulvio_from_Aughnacloy ultimately proven correct
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I fear that if O’Neill was resuming interim rolling duties it would already have been announced.
Announce the motherwell manager
Despite his first 6 games at motherwell
Celtic appointed Wifried NANCY because they wanted a manager in Peter LLWWLLLL’s image.
That’s what they got.
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There’s a hun on twitter called John Walker who’s a bit of a Kev of jocko fitbaw. He has coaching badges & does scouting/analysis in for clubs in the lower leagues but doesn’t hide his hun allegiances. He clips up match incidents/passages of play for lots of jocko league games etc & points out interesting stuff for the partisan &/or the neutral (cc @Batigol).
Maybe he just wanted Wilf to stay in the job but he had some stuff post derby that was showing a) the promising & positive impact when players were repeating what Wilf had done successfully at Colombus - Walker had gone off & actually watched a load of their games - & b) how most of the abject mistakes/goal concessions etc were when players just went off script whether because it wasn’t ingrained in them or his messaging wasn’t landing well enough.
His argument being that there was good stuff happening within this wider malaise, which I guess was the point Wilf was making in all his post defeat press conferences. It’s just that he was the wrong guy at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances. He needed to come in pre-season to fully embed all the shite he wanted to do, he didn’t have the force of personality of an O’Neill, Ange or even a Rodgers, nor the credibility, & he was coming into a toxic situation with the unrest between the fans & board.
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