'When I don't win' - Wilfried Nancy makes Celtic priorities clear as player lifts lid on tactics board secret

It happened earlier this season with Russell Martin. The then Rangers manager volunteered the information prior to a Champions League qualifying clash against Club Brugge that his mum had been so concerned by his appearance that she had phoned him up to check on his welfare. Everything’s fine, Martin had reassured her. I am enjoying it! Eight short weeks later he was sacked. A mother knows best.

Now Wilfried Nancy is telling everyone that his mum had noticed the bags already forming under his eyes after a stressful start to life at Celtic Park. Later he confided to journalists that “she thinks I can’t take care of myself”. Au contraire, one might respond, having heard the Frenchman's spirited defence of his methods.

‘When I don’t win I have a pain in my belly’

Here’s a message to Ryan Stevenson, Kris Boyd and all those already taking pot shots at the 48-year-old because he happens to use a tactics board on occasion and has chosen to wear green trainers: he’s not listening and even if he was, he doesn’t care what anyone says.

Nancy seems very much capable of looking after himself. And as for those who interpret his recent comments about caring more about performance than winning and losing as proving that, like Martin, he’s not cut out for the Old Firm hothouse, he can point to those same bags beneath his eyes that caught his mother’s attention. “Listen, I want to win,” he said. “When I don’t win I am awake in my bed looking at the ceiling. I have a pain in my belly. I don’t want to eat."

He mentioned his two children. “My daughter is 14-years-old and my son is eight," he said. "I like to play golf and two years ago I got the nets and the grass carpet for the garden, I wanted to help them to do it." His wife wasn't happy. She told him: 'you should only do your job outside of the house!' His kids initially resisted his efforts to coach them.

"They said, no, let us figure it out!" he recalled. "And after that, both of them cried because they couldn’t win. In soccer in the United States, football here, it was the same. When we played cards it was the same thing. I wanted to win. As a human being it’s totally normal that we want to win. So understand me well, I want to win.”

Evoking the spirit of Jim McLean

But, he stressed, it's not just about winning for the sake of winning. Evoking the spirit of ultra perfectionist former Dundee United manager Jim McLean, Nancy claimed that if a team of his wins 5-0 and he doesn't like the manner in which they did so, he will tell them.

Nancy was speaking at a table in the No. 7 suite inside the Lisbon Lions Stand ahead of his maiden European outing against AS Roma. Internazionale, Milan and Juventus have all come up against Celtic several times, as have Lazio. But the latter’s city rivals are facing the Parkhead side competitively for the first time, just as they did Rangers a few weeks ago.

Everything about it screams a big match, but then that was the case on Sunday, when Celtic hosted Hearts and came up short in Nancy’s first match in charge. The pressure is unrelenting and that’s before even considering a League Cup final against St Mirren on Sunday, when Wilfried can either stick one in the eye of his critics by collecting a first honour or else will be pilloried afresh.

The Roma assignment is perhaps different in that it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the team currently lying fourth in Serie A (though only 15th in the Europa League standings) leave Parkhead with a win. But it would still represent an unwelcome statistic for any new manager, never mind one at Celtic: not just two successive defeats but, almost unthinkably, two successive home defeats.

That would not, nevertheless, be reason to write off Nancy's prospects of being a success at Celtic. After all, Brendan Rodgers, first time around, suffered defeat by Gibraltar amateurs Lincoln Red Imps in his opening match and Ange Postecoglou lost his first three away appointments in the league. It can happen. Nancy has been ill-served not so much by the fixture list, which has been set for some time, but by the board, who installed him in such unfair circumstances: days before a tricky top of the table clash v Hearts and after Celtic had built up a head of steam under interim manager Martin O’Neill.

Tactics board secret

That being so, Nancy was not forced to make significant changes to the formation having only been in the building a short time. But it’s not as if the players looked completely foxed by 3-4-3. Two of the back three who played that afternoon against Hearts have now spoken. Kieran Tierney, who was deployed at left centre-half, had his say directly afterwards and now Auston Trusty, who played on the right, has given his view. Both have stressed how at ease they are in the system.

Trusty excelled while playing anywhere in a back three at Colorado Rapids, earlier in the his career. “I've actually had a lot of success (with it),” he said. “Playing in a back three got me a move to Arsenal, got me Player of the Year at Birmingham and then it actually got me a move here, and the chance to play in the Champions League. So I'm really comfortable with a back three."

As for the ridiculous stooshie over the tactics board, Trusty says he can let you into a secret. Such aids are commonplace in football. “We have big iPads, we have TV screens, we have boards, all behind the scenes that people don't see,” he said. “Even on the bench, they have iPads, with the tactics on it, but that was just a physical board. It's nothing new, nothing crazy, that's just how the game is."