THE WIL TO WIN

THINK what you like about Wilfried Nancy, but Celtic’s new manager certainly appears to know the size of the task he is now about to confront.

- 

“Yes, OK, right now my ass is on fire,” was how he put it yesterday as he reflected on the three-game whirlwind which has blown him so far off course in his first few days in the country that some suspect there may already be no way back.

Three defeats on the spin in the space of eight chaotic days has set alarm bells clattering all over Glasgow's east end - and, with a trip to face Dundee United at Tannadice in the Premiership next on the Frenchman's list tonight - a full-blown crisis might be about to turn into something even more calamitous and career-damaging.

However, even so, Nancy spoke yesterday like a man who has it all figured out, even if there have been precious few signs of it on the pitch during those beatings from Hearts, Roma and St Mirren.

It's OK to be scared seemed to be part of the messaging from a man who accepts he could hardly have got off to a more catastrophic start since taking the wheel from interim manager Martin O'Neill.

Today he'll pick up the keys to his new club car and he’s not afraid to admit the idea of driving on the opposite side of the road is quietly terrifying him too.

And yet it’s a change he’s willing to embrace - just like the challenge he is attempting to lay down to the players inside Celtic's Lennoxtown HQ.

Resilience. That's another key word in Nancy's notebook.

And he’s going to need every last drop as he battles to keep his head above a furiously rising tide.

He said: “It comes from the way I grew up. I also travelled a lot in my life.

“Until I was 14 years old, I was changing country every two years.

“I have friends who are the president of a country and I have friends who are in jail. And that kind of perspective is everything.