Peter Lawwell
Like him or loathe him, rate him or slate him, there really isn’t much doubt that like Lennon, Peter Lawwell has been a tremendous influence on the past nine years at our football club.
You can debate all you want about whether that’s too long for a CEO to be in a job, but the man continues to do it and if I’m being blunt he’s exactly the guy I’d want in charge at a time like this.
Crisis brings out the best in some people, and I think you’re going to see in the next few weeks and months what the real value of Peter Lawwell is.
There is simply nobody else in Scottish football who can navigate the landscape between self-interested clubs, dopey administrators, TV executives and sponsors the way this guy can.
We face an unprecedented situation here, and already he’s been talking to broadcasters and advertisers and other commercial partners to keep them on board. He is a credible figure where otherwise you might have the likes of Ann Budge, Leeann Dempster or, God forbid, Stewart Robertson trying to do it.
Can you even imagine that?
Lawwell has dominated the politics of Scottish football in the last decade. Even when he hasn’t been trying to, the rumour factory has churned out an endless series of stories identifying him as the real power in the land. Other club officials whisper that he has “too much influence”.
At Celtic Park Lennon is his third appointment of the run.
If there is disquiet, it’s that Lennon has been hired twice and Ronny was hired after being tabbed as the Irishman’s assistant at first. Only the hiring of Rodgers looks like it showed the level of ambition a club like ours requires. This is where some folk believe that Lawwell is too prone to playing it safe; add in this and a couple of transfer window debacles and you can understand why some fans – perhaps even a lot of fans – are concerned.
There’s also the ghost of Resolution 12, which is where some are going to judge his true legacy … and he’s not coming out of that particularly well at the moment.
Yet watch Lawwell where his job really matters, in the commercial side of the club, to see where his value to us lies. The recent Adidas deal in the biggest in the history of the game here. Within that sphere, Lawwell is nearly untouchable.