'Nancy blunder evidence of Celtic's blurred vision'

On days like this, when a manager falls, the immediate reaction is to think about where it all went wrong, the timeline of doom, the moments where the writing started appearing on the wall.

With Wilfried Nancy, there's no need for any of that because it was never right in the first place. There were no turning points in this saga, no twists in the plot.

Nancy's appointment was one of the greatest blunders Celtic have made in their history. A relative rookie on a bad run with Columbus Crew - they finished seventh in Major League Soccer - it was a punt based on little more than the hipster vibes of Paul Tisdale, the now former head of football operations.

Tisdale didn't open his mouth to fans or media in his brief time in a powerful position at Celtic Park, but he did a whole lot of damage. If Nancy ranks extremely highly in the club's most calamitous calls then Tisdale is on a par or, perhaps even, slightly ahead of him given that it was the self-styled 'Doctor Football' who championed Nancy to the club's board.

Nancy never got out of the blocks, his two wins from eight games coming in a flawed victory over bottom-of-the-table Livingston and a triumph over 10-man Aberdeen, who have also just sacked their manager.

All memory of Nancy's reign - if you want to call it that - will be shovelled under a carpet now by anybody and everybody culpable in the process of appointing him. If they're all true to recent form, none of them will speak, none will apologise, none will show humility by accepting that they got this woefully wrong.

The fans will have to make-do with a short written statement. Let them eat cake, in other words.

Nancy's laidback arrival - spending just 15 minutes talking with Martin O'Neill before ripping up everything O'Neill had done to stabilise things - was in stark contrast to the unceremonious manner of his exit. O'Neill, as interim, was there longer than Nancy.

The Frenchman talked about building castles in the sky. He laboured under the fatal impression that he had time to deliver his vision and that he deserved patience. In his parallel universe he said that winning wasn't everything while his masterpiece was under construction.

It was all about the "process." He called on people to look at his past record as evidence of his ability. "Do your job," he told journalists the day before failing to do his in a 3-1 home loss to Rangers, following on from a 2-0 defeat by Motherwell.

Nancy and Tisdale had to go. What's also obvious is that the hapless state of the club goes way deeper than those two over-promoted characters. It goes back to who ratified their appointments and why. It goes back to Celtic not just losing their way on the field but off it. It goes to the very top.

Celtic have now lost a manager, a head of football operations and a chairman (Peter Lawwell, driven out by an abusive element in the support) since Hogmanay.

The lack of communication from the club is remarkable. Never mind the extreme elements of the support, regular fans - the vast, vast majority - feel a profound disconnection, an alienation from what is going on.

There is a sense of entitlement among some, for sure, and it's easy to poke fun at that given all the titles Celtic have won. But, elsewhere, there's just an anger about a club on the drift, making lousy decisions, going backwards domestically and in Europe while sitting on close to £80m in the bank.

These fans talk of a lack of ambition, a lack of a plan under the current board, led by Michael Nicholson, the chief executive, and Dermot Desmond, the major shareholder, and the power in the shadows.

Celtic's vision seems to amount to staying ahead of Rangers and seeing what they can get out of Europe, if anything.

Brendan Rodgers railed against that thinking and his relationship with the powerbrokers at the club crashed and burned. There was a callousness about his exit and the brutal words about him from Desmond. Rodgers, for all his flaws, did not deserve that.

His assistant manager, John Kennedy, also left at that time. Kennedy had been at Celtic for 27 years as player and coach and yet he was given barely a sentence in a statement when he departed. He deserved more. It's a legitimate question to ask - where's the dignity and the class?

There's not a big picture view at Celtic, or not one that's apparent. Celtic could finish off their stadium and make it a near 80,000 citadel, one of the continent's best, but they haven't done it.

They could build one of football's greatest museums - lord knows they have enough icons and great moments to fill it - but there's no sign of it.

They could have deployed a modern and razor-sharp scouting system, but they haven't done that either.

They bob along, cash-rich and content with bossing it parochially, but even that is now at risk. The emergence of Hearts and the support they're getting from Tony Bloom and Jamestown Analytics is threatening to change the game in a very significant way.

Celtic thought they could take a gamble on Nancy because they couldn't imagine a world where any other side could rival their hold over the league title, their bread and butter.

And so they've gone back to the future, to O'Neill until the end of the season. It makes sense. O'Neill will bring structure and stability on the field.

There won't be so many bewildered looks on the faces of the Celtic players now. The system won't cause them sleepless nights anymore. His return should galvanise things but the fact that the board have had to turn to him again is illustrative of their malaise.

On Monday, the board undid two mistakes that should never have been made, but the humiliation of these past few weeks and this season as a whole should spark some deep introspection among the hierarchy at Celtic Park. And with it, a question: Is this a great football club or is it not?