There is an issue of trust which will arise when Michael Nicholson meets some of the members of the Celtic fan media because of his prior involvement in the Resolution 12 case.
I think that many of us would be willing to overlook past problems if they were not a sign of future action.
There are one or two things which still bother us and it would be pointless to pretend that there aren’t.
His preposterous defence of Brian Wilson’s “relegation” garbage in the Smith obituary on the grounds that it was “factually correct” is one of them. It is an assertion so idiotic and without foundation it should have been disqualifying.
But it almost behoves us to give this guy a chance no matter our misgivings and reservations and hope that all he’s done on certain occasions is give the “institutional line” and that he knows better.
He is the guy now, and that confers both responsibility on him and a curious kind of freedom.
He is fully entitled to chart a new course. We hope he does.
The transfer business we’ve done is a step in the right direction, but it would be ridiculous to allow that to wholly change our view of his appointment. There are more facets to the job than the ability to close transfer deals on time; that ought to be a minimum requirement, not the thing for which he will ultimately be judged.
It might not always be evident, but in many ways he has bigger fish to fry.
The CEO of Celtic has enormous power.
Is he ready to wield it?
Has he even thought about how?
He has certainly not used his profile in any significant way.
He has not spoken to the press. He has not spoken to the vast body of the fans, just a few hand-picked favourites trusted not to rock the boat. It is not good enough, not by a distance.
There are fights going on within our game, some for the very soul of it, and some of them are as important as what he does in relation to bolstering the team and supporting the manager.
He would have been one of the architects of the decision to appoint Higgins, the former police chief, to a highly sensitive role. If he was also involved in the decision that it was not going to happen that’s all well and good but all we have to go on there is rumour and speculation.
We still don’t know what this guy is all about or what he believes in, and it’s not impressive in the slightest that he’s a “Celtic fan” and all that other badge kissing nonsense. We would prefer someone whose CV blew us all away.
Instead we get all this phoney-baloney sentimental crap which, if it were qualifying, would give any one of us the credentials for the gig.
There are questions this guy has to answer, because they are fundamental to what our club does and how it acts as we go forward.
These are not minor issues, no matter what some members of our support chose to believe.
They are critical.
Does he accept or endorse the Survival Lie?
Does he accept the need for SFA reform?
Does he support Financial Fair Play?
Does he care about Celtic’s cultural heritage, our Irish roots, and is he prepared to fight on their behalf?
Is he prepared to aggressively defend us from our enemies?
Does this guy even accept that we have enemies?
That’s a question which goes right to the heart of everything that has gone wrong with the tenure of our current chairman, and why, for all his sins, I believe that this club lost a big figure on the day John Reid left.
Reid knew we had enemies.
He understood that perfectly well.
The only enemies our present chairman recognises appear to be the ones he sees amongst the support.
We already have an absentee figurehead in his seat. We have an absentee largest shareholder. We do not need – and we cannot afford – an anonymous CEO as well.
Being the top man at Celtic gives him power.
It is useless unless he is prepared to use it, in our interests and in the interests of the game.
He has a brimming inbox; that goes with the territory.
But he must not overlook things as important as these.
This is why some of us wanted a director of football; someone to take that side of the business on and leave the CEO to get on with focussing on the bigger picture, and these things are the bigger picture.
They are not part of the job … they are the job of a Celtic chief executive.
If Michael Nicholson is prepared to take it on, he will have the unqualified support of every Celtic fan.