Wilfried Nancy insists he is confident he can turn around his Celtic tenure despite struggling to find any positives after a 2-0 defeat at Motherwell.
The Steelmen outplayed the William Hill Premiership champions as goals from Ibrahim Said and Elliot Watt earned them a first win over Celtic for 10 years.
It was a fifth defeat in seven games for Nancy and a step backwards after back-to-back wins.
The Frenchman said: “I’m confident with where we want to go. This was a tough game. But I think that we’re going to get better.”
The Celtic fans largely vented their frustrations against the board, but the appointment of Nancy is part of that narrative.
“In terms of pressure, it doesn’t change the way I think about this because we know that we have to do well,” said the former Columbus Crew head coach, who stated that Daizen Maeda and Kieran Tierney’s half-time substitutions were pre-planned because “they were tired”.
“But for the moment, this is the reality and I knew that it could be like that.
“It was a tough, tough night. We faced a good team, collectively really good. I knew that this could be a bit difficult because of the way they play and where we are at this moment.”
When asked if Saturday’s derby against Rangers could be defining for him, Nancy said: “No, not at all. Each game for me is important and for the team is important.
“I don’t think about my future, I think about what I do now and what I need to do to improve the team.”
Nancy insisted after his opening four defeats that there were signs of progress in spells.
“This is the first time since I’m here that we struggled a lot,” he said.
“I think that I saw positive stuff defensively in the second half. The way we were able to cope with the way they unbalanced us in the first half, we did better in the second half. After that, it was not a good game for us.”
Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou hailed the best performance of his already highly impressive reign.
“We knew that we were probably going to need our best and most solid and most all-round, in-and-out-of-possession performance that we could muster to win, because the performances we have had have been really big and really good, but it hasn’t led to a win against Rangers or Celtic,” said the Dane, who started without a recognised centre-forward.
“Obviously it’s easy to say when you beat Celtic 2-0 that it’s the best performance, but I think when you take everything into consideration – our quality on the ball, our ability to hurt them both in and out of possession, our ability to shut them down, to keep them away from big chances, – it was very, very strong.
“And for the players and staff to deliver a performance like that after making a few changes with a very, very short time to take on board that information was fantastic.”
