Wilfried Nancy lost six of his eight games in charge, and Benjamin Nygren believes the players need to take some responsibility for that

Celtic summer signing Benjamin Nygren says the players must take a huge portion of the blame for Wilfried Nancy’s dismissal after his calamitous 33-day tenure in charge of the Hoops.

Nancy was sacked from his position as Celtic manager less than a month after taking charge of the champions after overseeing a 3-1 defeat to fierce rivals Rangers in his final game. It marked the team’s sixth defeat in eight matches of his stewardship and allowed both the Light Blues and Hearts to take initiative in the title race as the Hoops also missed out on silverware by losing the League Cup final against St Mirren.

The Frenchman's bold decision to rip up Martin O’Neill’s winning formula in favour of a radical change of system never really materialized, and the former Columbus Crew boss failed to convince the board that he even deserved a transfer window to turn things around.

Nygren reacts to Nancy’s departure

Summer signing Nyrgren, who has already worked under three different managers at Celtic, says that Nancy leaves Parkhead with the squad’s best wishes.

He says the players must take their fair share of the blame for how things panned out. He told Record Sport: “Yeah, that's unfortunately how it is in football. Things can move quickly. "We didn't do well enough, didn't have the results we wanted and didn't perform good enough, so that's something that can happen in football.

“But we still have huge respect for the previous manager, but now our focus is moving ahead and to start winning games again.”

Nygren admits O’Neill’s return has already lifted morale

O’Neill is back at Celtic for the third time in his career after performing well during an interim stint between October and November.

The former Aston Villa and Leicester City coach is tasked with trying to resurrect Celtic’s dream of a fifth successive title as he eyes a fourth Scottish title after a hugely successful first spell at Parkhead more than two decades ago.

O’Neill is renowned for being a charismatic figure with strong man-management skills and part of his task is lifting the team after a challenging run of results.

Nygren admits the veteran and his backroom staff of Shaun Maloney and Mark Fotheringham are already having a positive influence in that regard. He said: "Yeah, for the first time we had some days between the games, so we've been training hard for the next game.

"I think it's been a very good training week, good intensity and quality in training and getting back to the stuff that we did before. So I think it's been very good.

“It helps that we've had him before and we know what Martin and Shaun want from us. I think it's been going pretty fast to settle into what we did before. It's been good in training."