Simon Jordan works alongside Martin O’Neill at talkSport so has a fairly unique insight into the former Celtic manager’s thinking. Earlier in the week the legendary Celtic manager spoke with Jordan sitting alongside him to Jim White about his willingness to remain at Celtic had he been asked.
Celtic interim manager Martin O’Neill during the Premier League match between Celtic and Kilmarnock at Celtic Park on November 09, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
That wasn’t the case and after having a 100% win rate in domestic football in his interim period in charge came to an end, Wilfried Nancy came in as the permanent manager replacing Brendan Rodgers, a manager who had one every Scottish Premiership he competed in as Celtic manager but was chased with some vengeance by this Celtic Board and the club’s principal shareholder.
Celtic v Falkirk 29.10.2025 Scottish Premiership. Martin O’Neill, Shaun Maloney, Gavin Strachan and Mark Fotheringham Photo Kenny Ramsay IMAGO
As rumours about Nancy being sacked swirl around Glasgow today after Nancy lost his fourth consecutive manager at Tannadice last night, Jordan has outlined the situation regarding O’Neill, who had his name chanted last night by the Celtic support.
Celtic Board and the Green Brigade. Dundee Utd v Celtic, Scottish Premiership. Tannadice, 17 December 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
I was at the game with the ultras just along from my seat and the majority of the Celtic support to my left. To the right the Sack The Board chants were heard pretty much all evening long, but the wider support didn’t join in for the majority of these chants.
However it was the wider support to the left – the folk on the supporters buses – who started the ‘Nancy, Nancy get to France’ chat and quickly followed that with the ‘Martin O’Neill, Martin O’Neill’ chant. It was loud and seemed to be an uprising of the Celtic support telling the club to remove Nancy and replace him with Martin O’Neill.
Wilfried Nancy, Dundee Utd v Celtic, Scottish Premiership. Tannadice, 17 December 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
Peter Martin from PLZ Soccer posted this on X earlier today: “I am led to believe that discussions are now taking place with Wilfried Nancy and the Celtic board to end his two week reign as Celtic manager.”
I am led to believe that discussions are now taking place with Wilfried Nancy and the Celtic board to end his two week reign as Celtic manager. pic.twitter.com/3jYSWr4Y9j
— Peter Martin (@PeterMsport) December 18, 2025
We’ll see how that plays out, but Celtic are apparently denying it. Perhaps they’ll issue mainstream media bans now?
This obviously comes after Celtic CEO Michael Nicholson gave Nancy a vote of confidence last night in his comfortable interview on Celtic TV to acknowledge the decision take by Peter Lawwell to resign and to use that as an excuse to hit out at the Celtic support with yet more dubious claims of threats and intimidation.
They tried the same thing a few weeks ago ahead of the Hearts game which Nancy lost, by briefing Sunday Mail complaining about the same thing, although it was really just some posters posted around the city.
Here’s what Simon Jordan was saying this morning on talkSport.
“Martin O’Neill did not walk on water. He is not a miracle worker. He got a group of players in a sub-standard league with a team that might have sub-standard Celtic players, but are better than the other players so should be able to get outcomes.
“I think Martin would have won the majority of games, with the exception of maybe Roma. They have gone for a guy who has changed things – which these is nothing wrong with, you want managers to be definite – but really, sensible, grown up managers go ‘do I have to change things, I want to finesse things, should I do it when I have the bodies in the building to represent how I want to play. I tell you what the fella I spent 15 minutes talking to and probably didn’t really want to gave me a base…’ keep it simple stupid.
😳 “Martin O’Neill did not walk on water.”
🔥 “We all know that the players aren’t good enough.”
Simon Jordan reacts to Wilfried Nancy’s fourth defeat as Celtic manager. pic.twitter.com/vb3SdIN4ab
— talkSPORT (@talkSPORT) December 18, 2025
“The players are better than what they are showing. To go on about context, the context is you have lost four games. You wonder what is going on in that dressing room. You don’t go and win seven games out of eight and, bang, off a cliff. That is something that has changed in the environment. No one is disputing that Celtic could be better.”
Asked about his thoughts on whether Nancy should now be sacked after just four matches in charge Jordan said: ”Well, you can, but there must have been a reason you employed him. I am in the camp that you should have kept Martin for the season, or maybe even longer if Martin was up to the job and felt like he had the vitality and wherewithal to do it full-time.
Wilfried Nancy, Dundee Utd v Celtic, Scottish Premiership. Tannadice, 17 December 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
“There is always going to be a longer-term picture, so I do understand why they have gone for the future, but you need to be clear what the future looks like. With all due respect to performances being vouched for by Nigel Reo-Cocker in America in the MLS that is not the blueprint to manage a powerhouse like Celtic.
“This is something they must have considered, because my understanding is this wasn’t a done deal. Martin wasn’t just an interim manager.
“He was in there to hold the fort and they hadn’t made their mind up. So there was still an opportunity to have alighted on Martin, so they must have really believed that Wilfried Nancy was the man to go to.”
Indeed Martin is not the Messiah, and with this group of weak willed chancers as players, he would have won the Dundee Utd game perhaps, but I doubt he’d have won any of the others.
Did people not watch the performances when he was manager?. The tactic was the players were sent out to beat mostly inferior players( on paper), and they mostly did this, with a big dollop of luck on occasion. The performances by and large were dreadful though, the hardest was against one of the most demoralised teams in Feyenood that I have ever seen, and the real test came after, in Roma, Hearts and StMirren, and Martin would have done well to win one of those games, with this squad. If people took the rose tinted glasses off, and actually looked at how we played, it didn’t look very different from last night mostly, with domination, zero or one goal, then collapse. The games we won more convincingly very much hung in the balance until we sneaked a second goal, then kicked on
My bigger fear if we got Martin back is that reality would soon bite, risking a very proud legacy, but then the hard games are mostly over for now, so maybe we could ride our luck again, for a little while.
Make no mistake, these players would get anyone the sack.
They might have lost against Roma if MON was in place, not the other games though. MON set them up to make sure they got the result, he wasn’t trying to impose a needless complex system, he just wanted them winning games because they were low on confidence. The difference is that MON is a world class manager…..he knows how to motivate a team. Those players are akin to sticking Real Madrid in the Lowland League, Rodgers fell out with them (as per usual with him), MON got some belief back in them and Nancy…..well, I guess he plays a certain way and the team don’t have that level of trust in him yet. Nancy never played at any level and he’s not really had much of a career anywhere. MON was a well respected top level player that started managing at a low level and worked his way up. He could be trusted with money because he spent most of his career trying to build actual teams rather than buying one person for silly money.
I am tickled by your description of MONs play also being “domination, zero or one goal, then collapse”. You do realise they won all the games except one….and they did score in that one as well under MON? There were no games with no goals, two 4-0, two 3-1, two 1-0, one 2-1 and one 1-3 defeat against a team they were never winning against. Is was night and day from what has happened over the last 4 games.
I do feel for Nancy….if he’d arrived during a slump then the platers might be more receptive, but Celtic went all out and brought in MON…..who ended his stint with an 87.5% win ratio. It’s very hard to follow that