The Celtic CEO still plays the Invisible Man. It’s time he stepped out of the shadows.

Last week, as everyone knows, Patrick Stewart gave his first major interview as the Ibrox CEO. It did not—absolutely did not—go down well. Not a single media hack was impressed. All of them cried the blues at the end of it, lamenting that he had no positive news to share.

Earlier today, I posted a piece about how austerity has finally arrived at the club, evidenced by the decision to axe the B Team. Later on, I’ll discuss something else that highlights this tightening of the purse strings. And I’ll be asking a question the media has conspicuously avoided. But for now, I want to focus on something different.

Amid all the media hoopla surrounding what Patrick Stewart had to say, two questions have naturally arisen. They are questions that demand answers more urgently by the day. In any normal media landscape, they would be unavoidable.

Those questions are: does Michael Nicholson need to get in front of the cameras and give an interview of his own? And should he, even if he doesn’t think it’s necessary?

If someone had told the media and the fans, when Nicholson was appointed, that we’d be a couple of years down the line and he still wouldn’t have uttered a single word in public to a single journalist in an interview setting, what would the reaction have been? Disbelief? Shock? Disgust? Anger?

I know I’d have been shocked. I would have been offended at the suggestion that he could take on such an important role without offering us any indication of his plans, his strategy, or the changes he wanted to make. His silence shows a certain contempt for the supporters, and it reflects poorly on the media too. It’s clear he thinks they’re weak, and he’s probably right. As CEO of the biggest club in the country, he knows they won’t challenge him on his silence.

Nicholson has questions to answer, without a doubt.

But he has never seemed willing to answer them. My colleague and friend, Joe McHugh, raised one of those questions at the AGM and was treated like garbage for doing so. That incident ended any formal relationship I had with the club. I no longer want to sit in the press room with the rest of the invited fan media and pretend the club respects us. They don’t. Michael Nicholson doesn’t. If he doesn’t think the question Joe asked—a legitimate one—is worthy of an answer, then he has no regard for the supporters or even the shareholders.

And the question couldn’t have been more fundamental. It was about Mark Lawwell and the process by which the former CEO’s son was hired to run our transfer strategy. A strategy that, last summer, was proven to be an absolute farce. We’re entitled to know how he was hired, who the other candidates were, and under what circumstances he departed the club. Because if he wasn’t told to leave, he should have been.

Even this summer wasn’t free of controversy. Transfers dragged on far too long, and the Adam Idah saga hangs over it all. Everyone knows it was a classic case of our club getting the timing completely wrong and paying the price for it. Idah wouldn’t have been cheap, but I don’t believe for a second he would have cost us £9 million had we moved sooner.

So, I think these are questions the CEO should have to answer. Under normal circumstances, someone would be putting those questions to him. But no one is permitted to do so because he never submits himself to scrutiny—and, by extension, this board never really submits itself to scrutiny either.

That’s how mistakes happen. That’s how insular viewpoints and echo chambers produce disastrous consequences over and over again, in countless organisations and across many different fields.

On the other hand, some people might argue that the club is stable, well-run, still winning trophies, still posting profits, and is a model of corporate excellence. And that’s a difficult point to argue against, in a sense. If you didn’t know what you were looking for—or looking at—you might miss where the real problems lie.

Nevertheless, to all intents and purposes, we are the model for how modern football clubs should operate—something very few clubs manage to emulate. And I’m not unhappy with a policy that dictates we only spend what we earn. In fact, I’m proud of it. I’m proud that we operate on this basis and remain successful at the same time.

I also firmly believe that at a football club, the chief executive’s job is to write the cheques, run the business, and leave the football to the football people. So, in reality, the only person who should be giving regular media interviews is the man in the manager’s chair—the boss. The guy who gets the credit and the glory because he runs the team.

That said, I would like to see Michael Nicholson do a series of media interviews. I want him to put himself out there, to talk to the press. It’s important that a chief executive at a major institution has a public face, a public persona, and is willing to meet with the media and other stakeholders from time to time to explain what’s going on behind the scenes.

This is one area where I have to give Patrick Stewart some credit. He knew the message he was delivering wasn’t going to be a popular one. He had to know that there were things he couldn’t openly say but was at least obliged to hint at—things that were bound to be wildly unpopular. Not least of these was his and the board’s pledge of continued support for the man in the dugout.

But, to his credit, Stewart stepped up. He faced the press, spoke to them, and answered their questions. Those answers weren’t what many of the hacks wanted to hear, but he answered them nonetheless.

So the idea that Michael Nicholson owes our club—and the wider Scottish football family—a similar display of transparency isn’t a crazy one.

I know Michael Nicholson isn’t putting himself up for an interview with fan media anytime soon. And even if he were willing, I know the audience for that would be handpicked by the club itself, ensuring that very few hard questions made it through. But the mainstream media has the power to request such an interview, to publicise that request, and to keep doing so until they get an appropriate response.

There are essentially four key questions I think Celtic fans would want answers to.

First: Is our club satisfied that the club at Ibrox has met its obligations under the ticketing agreement? I mean the ones over safety and security. And if not, will their fans be allowed back at Celtic Park in March?

Second: How committed is Celtic to reforming the Scottish Football Association and the SPFL so that they better serve the interests of all clubs, not just a select few? And will Nicholson commit to giving up Celtic’s automatic seat on the SPFL board, as part of the rotational agreement with Ibrox? Will he support putting that decision back into the hands of the member clubs, so that those executive boards are elected on merit and no one has an unofficial “emeritus” position?

Third: What is the current status regarding efforts to get Brendan Rodgers to sign a new long-term contract? How long before his current deal expires will the club wait before it act decisively, rather than dragging things out, before considering alternatives?

Fourth and finally: Can he give a categorical assurance that the manager and the needs of the manager are central to the club’s transfer policy going forward? Will the club ensure that the football department’s needs take priority, as and when required, rather than using transfer activity as a fundraising mechanism for the PLC?

Put simply, can he promise that when players are signed, it’s because the manager wants them—not because some unqualified bean counter has decided to stockpile midfielders and wingers in the hopes of selling them on for profit later?

You’ll notice the question about Mark Lawwell isn’t on that list. But it remains important, and any journalist worth their salt would be asking about it regardless of the fans’ priorities.

I’m sure there are many more questions Nicholson could answer, and his responses would undoubtedly be of interest to supporters and the media alike. But until someone asks these questions, they’re never going to be answered. And maybe that suits some people. Maybe it even suits a few of the hacks.

But when the Ibrox CEO has been in the door for mere weeks and already puts himself in front of journalists and their fan media, the obvious question arises: why hasn’t our own CEO done the same thing in all these years? And why has nobody ever put pressure on him to do it?

Until someone does, he never will.

Photo by Craig Williamson/SNS Group via Getty Images

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