Wilfried Nancy Media Conference ahead of Celtic trip to Tannadice

Q: There’s a lot of criticism of the fact that you immediately introduced your formation, your style of play straight away. Do you stand by that decision? Do you now just try to accelerate the process of the players learning that? Or do you think, reflect, maybe you step back a wee bit from that?

Wilfried Nancy: “No, I’m here not to please myself. I’m here to find a way to help my players to play together offensively and defensively. So, after that, this is totally normal that people criticise me or tell certain things regarding the system or the way I play because I don’t win for the moment. But like I said, I’m going beyond winning. And when I’m going to win, I’m going to go beyond winning. Because for me, it’s about character. It’s about personality. It’s about coherence. It’s about also the way you want to play offensively and defensively.

“And there is nothing about the system. This is about the desire to compete every time. And after that, fans or people, again, for sure, I want to have all the fans on board with me. But this, I cannot control that. The only thing that I can control is what I do on the pitch. I know. And I’m asking a lot of questions to see what I can do better. But again, it’s a bit difficult to say that because for the moment, I haven’t won. But when we’re going to win, it’s going to be the same. It will not change for me because my job is to make the team better when we win and also when we lose.”

Q: When you say go beyond winning, what do you mean by that?

Wilfried Nancy: “Beyond winning is, like I said, we all want to win games. OK, we all want to win games. And I want to win games. Yes, I would like for the players to win games just to validate what we do. What do you have to do to win? And for the moment, we haven’t won, so it means that we have certain things that we have to do better. But the way we do it, we are on the good step to maximise our chance to win. So that’s why I’m talking about beyond winning, because the winning part, it’s here. We have to win. We know that.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? So now, is it possible to go beyond winning? What do we do to win? Like I said, in the second half, I think that we could have played with more personality. I think that maybe we could have just did certain things. So the how is important. And with the how, in a better way, the consequence is the win, if we can. So that’s why for me, I want to go beyond winning. So what does it take to win? Do you understand what I mean? This is my explanation for that.”

Q: The games continue. You’re given Wednesday, Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday. There’s very little time on the training pitch. How do you accelerate that process of the players totally understanding?

Wilfried Nancy: “It’s so difficult because again, we play the final and yes, we lost the final and so sad for that, so disappointed for that. But at the same time, they deserve to play the final. So it means that we are two games behind everyone. And I would have preferred to have maybe more time. Not maybe. I would have preferred to have more time to have a normal week to train because when I talk to the players, I have to do only videos. But as you know, there is people that are visual. They have to see. There are people that are auditory. They have to listen. But there are people that we have to move them on the pitch. And for a moment, I don’t have the time for that. It’s a fact.

“And again, this is not an excuse because I knew that before. But my point is, it’s a fact. And as a coach, we need time. But at the same time, we know that we don’t have time. So that’s why for me, it’s new. But I know what to do. And I can tell you that every day there is an improvement. You are not able to see it because you are not with us. But now, I cannot talk too much because results are important. And for a moment, I have nothing. But I know that it will come.”

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