The Celtic Collective wants Nicholson gone and no-one can make a case for him.

Last month I wrote a piece titled Michael Nicholson GTF. The Trinity Tims podcast episode that night carried the same headline. Then, last week, the Collective made Michael Nicholson’s departure one of the conditions for calling off the Dundee boycott.

That was the point at which this stopped being rhetorical and started being structural.

It is also the point Celtic will find hardest to concede, because the club does not want to create the impression that supporter pressure can remove a chief executive. However, here is the blunt truth. Supporter pressure can remove a CEO. And in this case, it has to.

Michael Nicholson will leave Celtic within the next twelve months.

That is no longer a prediction. It is now an outcome.

The only question is whether it happens in an orderly fashion or under escalating pressure.

Whatever Nicholson’s personal qualities, he is not suited to the role he holds.

He was over-promoted, and that reality has now become impossible to conceal. His position is therefore untenable.

In any other large organisation facing a customer boycott, the CEO would already have gone.

Indeed, in most serious businesses, matters would never have reached this stage in the first place.

A chief executive would have addressed the issue early. He would have spoken publicly. He would have engaged with stakeholders, and he would have explained what was happening within the organisation and why.

That is the job.

Yet Nicholson has done none of that.

He does not behave like a chief executive, nor does he act like one. He certainly does not communicate like one.

Instead, Nicholson is best known for his absence. He avoids interviews and scrutiny.

He avoids leadership. Meanwhile, as the crisis deepens, he remains silent.

There are only two explanations for that behaviour. Either he lacks the competence required for the role, or he functions purely as a proxy for someone else’s decision-making. In reality, it does not matter which is true. Both amount to the same thing.

Both disqualify him.

You cannot lead an organisation in crisis by hiding.

You cannot remain silent while customers threaten to withdraw their money. Nicholson cannot refuse to take ownership and still claim the authority of the role. In any functioning corporate culture, that alone would be grounds for dismissal.

Nicholson earns more than £800,000 a year. That salary requires visible leadership.

It requires accountability. It requires communication. So far, he has delivered none of them.

Celtic supporters are not outsiders. Fans are stakeholders. We invest emotionally, financially and culturally in this institution. Therefore, we are entitled to expect competence at the top of the organisation. Celtic supporters are entitled to expect a chief executive who can actually perform the duties of the job.

Michael Nicholson cannot.

Supporters have known that for months. Repeated failures, repeated crises and repeated silence have confirmed it. Yet no credible voice has stepped forward to argue that he should remain in post.

Nobody has made the case for him.

That alone tells you everything.

Even in politics, when someone is plainly floundering, allies usually step forward to defend them. Starmer had that the other day.

Here, by contrast, there is nothing. There is no defence. No justification. No explanation.

Inside the club, people will know exactly what supporters know.

Michael Nicholson cannot do this job.

Any chief executive who presides over the contemptuous treatment of customers would be dismissed. A chief executive who oversaw a senior appointment that collapsed within weeks would be dismissed. A chief executive who, after years in the role, has never once articulated a strategy would be dismissed.

This is a club with £77 million in the bank. A club that has won fourteen of the last fifteen league titles. There should be enormous goodwill among its supporters. Yet it now finds itself in a spiralling crisis.

That crisis did not arrive by accident.

An organisation does not drift into this position while the chief executive keeps his head down unless leadership has failed. If that is not a firing offence, then the role itself has no meaning.

This is not a difficult decision.

Michael Nicholson is not up to the job.

He falls well below the calibre Celtic requires. He represents a significant financial cost with no corresponding value.

His leadership has brought the club to this point.

Therefore, making his removal a condition for restoring normal relations between club and supporters is not extreme.

It is obvious. It should not even require explanation.

Even now, Nicholson has an honourable option.

He can recognise reality and step aside. Every day he clings to the role deepens the damage and reinforces the perception that self-interest matters more than the institution he claims to serve.

This is over. If he will not make that decision himself, the club must take it out of his hands.

Celtic cannot move forward while he remains in post.