Today, an intriguing wee bit of newspaper fluff.
Peter Lawwell is linked to the vacant chief executive’s job at Sunderland, which has been available since the Adam Johnson scandal.
Some have speculated that this is the media trying to stir something up before the Sevco cup semi-final.
I very much doubt it.
Even they can do better than this.
For a start, this is the very definition of a “Who cares?” story.
Club’s don’t lose their CEO and then go on to get beaten by a lower league team in a cup game. It simply doesn’t happen. The players don’t give a monkeys. The manager’s heart doesn’t miss a beat, unless the CEO is protecting him from knives in the boardroom. (You never know.)
Secondly, this is no ordinary CEO, of course.
There are a lot of Celtic fans – me included – who would dance around the block if this guy packed his pencil case.
We’ve wanted him gone for a good few years now.
On a personal level, if I’m being blunt, I think he’s a waste of a parking place and the most over-rated and over-paid mid-level executive director in Scotland.
I’m not alone in that view.
If the story is true and he decides to go, I’ll volunteer to take him down there personally, and even help him move into his new office.
In fact, if I thought for a minute that Celtic fan pressure might make him take the job I’d be starting the letter writing campaign urging him on personally.
I’d love to see him leave.
But I don’t think he will, at least not yet.
When he does go, frankly he won’t be missed.
There are dozens of high quality individuals out there who would do his job without ego, without interfering with the manager, on a fraction of his salary, and who would come to Celtic Park in a heartbeat.
Some of the prawn sandwich Celts might miss him – although God knows why – but the rest of us won’t shed tears for the departure of a guy who has way too much influence at every level at Parkhead, and is the public face of the downsizing for which we’ve become notorious.
As such, this seems like a pretty weak effort on behalf of the hacks.
It’s hard to believe that this is the story that’s going to rock us in our final run-in.
There’s undoubtedly something more on its way.