Wilfried Nancy has challenged his Celtic squad to raise their performance ceiling as the title race begins to take shape…
After a turbulent introduction in Glasgow that saw the Hoops face four straight defeats, the Frenchman has overseen a slight turnaround, with consecutive league victories restoring momentum.
Despite the improved results, Nancy maintains there is significant room for growth within his side. Attention now turns to tonight’s meeting with Motherwell, who currently sit fourth. Victory would bring Celtic level on 41 points with leaders Hearts, who don’t play this evening.
Nancy took encouragement from elements of the weekend 4-2 win away to Livingston, where Celtic responded positively after twice falling behind during a frantic opening 10 minutes.
Speaking via Daily Record, Nancy said: “My job is to challenge the players. We did really good stuff on Saturday. I would challenge them to keep what we did. I would challenge them also to do better regarding certain things. But at the same time, I would support them because on Saturday, the competitive spirit that they had was really good.
“When we lost the goals, it was not easy, but they bounced back to win. So everything is connected. It’s about cycles. We won two games. Now everything is settled. For me, this is not settled because I want to push more. I want to do more for my players. This is the way it is. So I’m fine with that. I just want to be consistent with my players.”
“You’re going to say that I am silly, but I also really like the games when we lost the four in a row, as we had really, really good moments but we took a slap in terms of results.”
Nancy added: “So now what I like is the consistency that we have. We’re able to be more consistent in terms of results, yes, but also in the way we want to play offensively and defensively.”
“This is the most important. The consistency that we have. This is something that every time I would challenge the player, for the next game, for the next game, and so on, and so on, and so on. And after that, we’ll see.”
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Despite a fairly turbulent calendar year within our club.
It has become our normality now in not having a clue what to expect upon performance levels, on a game by game basis at present?
Still possibly applies for tonight also?
Given up with expecting to see our best available team on offer this season for ourselves, as chances are, it’s not going to happen imo?
However, still remain optimistic that our season can remain as another successful one, all the same?
Would require a higher degree of consistency with results and the performance levels to match.
Possibly needs to be also, to combat the obvious cheating ongoing within the SPFL, to favour a certain club at present?
These are not new challenges that we have to overcome.
But starting tonight and bringing that into the Glasgow Derby, has to be a must for ourselves imo?
Still believe that Nancy and our players are more than capable of providing the likes, even if my own confidence levels aren’t as high as I would like at present?