WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG?

Desmond needed to end the farcical Nancy reign sooner

- BY MICHAEL GANNON

THERE may have been a fair few Celtic fans who got excited when news broke yesterday morning about a big club binning a boss who was wedded to his system but failing to get results.

Those same hearts will have sunk when they learned it was Ruben Amorim staggering out of Manchester United with the plant pot under his arm rather than the current encumbent of the smouldering Parkhead hotseat.

Turns out they only needed to wait a few hours. But for many, even that too long.

Yesterday afternoon, Wilfried Nancy was finally sacked by Dermot Desmond.

Eight games and two wins. Much of the support will be wondering why it took so long.

There are plenty of parallels that could be drawn between Nancy and Amorim. There's the formation for a start.

Like the Portuguese coach, Nancy is a disciple of the flexible 3-4-3 strategy, despite it being notoriously difficult without a specific set of players.

Amorim did bend a tad this season when he was starting to look doomed, but even in his darkest days in the second half of last season at Old Trafford, he simply refused to budge.

The 40-year-old said “not even the Pope” could convince him to change his approach

He might have had a point, mind you. Pope Leo is apparently a Roma fan - where legendary Italian boss Gianluca Gasperini is one of the few managers in top-level football to make 3-4-3 sing.

Celtic fans got to see it in action a few weeks ago - only the Hoops didn't have a prayer.