Kieran Tierney has admitted that recent weeks have been some of the toughest of his Celtic career as he reflected on the turbulent run of form that led to Wilfried Nancy’s sacking.
The 28-year-old returned to Celtic Park in the summer on a pre-contract deal after his Arsenal contract entered its final months. Despite interest from elsewhere, Tierney was determined to make a return to his boyhood club, where he had only ever known success during his first spell.
But his first season back has fallen short of expectations. With no Champions League football, a League Cup final loss, and now a title chase from behind, Tierney has acknowledged the scale of the challenge.
Speaking about the difficult run under Nancy, which saw Celtic lose six of eight matches, with wins coming only against ten-man Aberdeen and struggling Livingston, Tierney said the abrupt shift in tactics made for a difficult transition.
“I just think if you’ve played a certain way for so long you are used to it,” he said to the Herald. “If you are going to change something, it’s going to upset it a bit, and it will take a bit of time. You see at the weekend [vs Dundee United], it looked like we’d played that formation for a while.”
Tierney, who was deployed both as a left wing-back and a left-sided centre-half during Nancy’s brief tenure, also stressed that tactical changes were not the only issue behind the team’s poor form.
“It was a tough few weeks, results-wise. Again, it’s on more than just a formation. We had to do better in front of goal and better defensively. It’s tricky to pinpoint what happened to get so many defeats. It’s something we need to reflect on and move on from.”
Celtic currently sit third in the Premiership, three points behind Rangers and six off leaders Hearts.
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