It’s never a dull week at Celtic.
That has been proven this season more than ever before because there probably hasn’t been a more chaotic season in Celtic’s history.
The fact of the matter is that Wilfried Nancy has lost his three games in charge, and is already under serious pressure ahead of the Dundee United match on Wednesday night.
Just to add to the drama of Celtic losing to St Mirren in the League Cup final on Sunday at Hampden, Martin O’Neill was in the talkSPORT studios to discuss the match, and Jim White was seemingly surprised by what he was hearing.
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Given that Nancy is French and is coming from the MLS, many did question what he knew about Celtic and the Scottish game.
Perhaps O’Neill could give him a few pointers; at the end of the day, there is no better man to ask.
According to O’Neill, Dermot Desmond did ask Celtic’s legendary coach to speak with the incoming boss, so he waited around after the Dundee game on Wednesday night to do so.
The Irishman explained that the conversation lasted around only ’15 minutes’, as Jim White seemingly couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
The talkSPORT host questioned ‘what was the purpose’ of Desmond asking O’Neill to speak to Nancy, if it was so ‘brief.’
And given Nancy’s woeful start, it doesn’t help matters that O’Neill explained that the man in the dugout had ‘his own view on players’, which clearly isn’t showing, given what the team has produced in his three games in charge.
O’Neill: “The board asked me if I would stay on and speak to the incoming manager. So, my last game was on a Wednesday night against Dundee. I would have been flying back to London on Thursday, but I stayed until later on.
“I met the incoming manager. Very affable. Very nice. It’s only a 10-15-minute conversation. What can you make of that, anybody? He has his own philosophy. His own viewpoint in the game, that’s absolutely fine. But I wasn’t going to be coming in and giving him advice.”
Jim White: “What did you say to him about Celtic? You must have said something.
O’Neill: “No. Very, very little. He would have seen the matches.”
White: “Martin, it wasn’t a 15-minute conversation, surely?”
O’Neill: “I promise you it was no longer than that (15 minutes).”
White: “So, what was the purpose of it? If it was that brief?”
O’Neill: “What did you want me to do? Did you want me to run through?”
White: “Why did Dermot Desmond want you to hang around to welcome Wilfried Nancy. Obviously, Dermot, I am presuming, wanted Martin O’Neill, steeped in the football club, to pass a bit of that to the incoming man.
O’Neill: “I would have passed on anything that the incoming manager would have wanted to hear from me. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.
“He had his own view on players, and that’s fine. I would have given him the thing that’s most important, for him to bed in. For him to put his own mark on the football club. Very, very important with the January window coming up. They have lost a couple of players to AFCON, and the squad needs supplementing.”
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