Lawwell appointment Michael Nicholson takes over as Celtic CEO

Acting CEO Michael Nicholson has been at Celtic since March 2013 and is very much in the Peter Lawwell risk-averse category.

Initially as Company Secretary he held that post for six and a half years before promotion to the newly created role of Director of Legal and Football Affairs in December 2019.

With that background and 18 months in a very senior position at the club his relationship with the incoming CEO would have been critical, after 72 days in the hot seat McKay has opted away.

Keen to push himself as a moderniser, McKay inherited a club very much stuck in its ways under a board of Directors that had grown out of touch with the supporters and the digital age.

Chairman Ian Bankier is now 69 years old, joining him on the club’s Remuneration Committee is former Labour MP Brian Wilson who is 72 with Tom Allison also aged 72 who has been a non-executive director for 20 years.

McKay hasn’t made any significant appointments of his own with a three month consultancy for Gordon Strachan his only move towards modernisation, even at that it is debateable if that was his choice with Strachan a long term friend of Dermot Desmond with two of his sons already on the payroll.

When Brendan Rodgers left to manage Leicester it said something about the infrastructure at Celtic, with McKay swiftly stepping down as CEO and Nicholson stepping up there are shades of the Hampden Showers in 2019 about this, Nicholson does know the city.

Seeking assistance on dealing with the job of being CEO it is hard to look beyond a phone call to Lawwell for Celtic’s acting CEO.

CLICK HERE for Nicholson’s Linkedin profile.