Chris McKay will never escape his part in Celtic’s disastrous unravelling.

Earlier today I wrote about Andy Walker and how he is one of the members of the commentariat who has at least recognised the growing division between Celtic fans and the club, and what that might mean. Now I want to focus on one specific individual.

I have written about Dermot Desmond. I have written about Michael Nicholson. But the more I am exposed to the contempt and behaviour of Chris McKay, the more I think he deserves special criticism and his place squarely in the spotlight.

When Michael Nicholson was appointed at this club, in what was a promotion for which he was staggeringly underqualified, part of his job was effectively taken away from him and handed to McKay. Celtic had never operated in this way before, with a Chief Executive and a Chief Financial Officer both at the same time.

It is a modern affectation, one you see in big corporations, but not something that had ever really defined how this club functioned.

Nicholson was someone most people had barely heard of. He had been the club secretary before his promotion. Wilson was a former Labour MP and had been on the board at Celtic for a long time; still, he was fairly anonymous.

McKay was someone barely anyone knew at all. What stands out about the last twelve months is how all of that has changed.

People like Nicholson, people like Wilson, had some modest profile. But they could have gone through their entire lives without attracting a second glance. Now they are as recognisable as any player at this club.

They could have sat quietly in the directors’ box for years, enjoying the comfort and the illusion that the club’s success flowed from them, as long as they supported the football department and the manager. That is all they ever had to do. None of them can do that now. None of them will ever return to that anonymity.

I remember saying the first time the cameras picked these men out during a fan protest that they had better get used to it, because once that scrutiny starts, it does not go away. It becomes permanent. They brought it on themselves.

Chris McKay is perhaps the most egregious example of that. A Chief Executive of a major football institution will always become a quasi-public figure. Even if he keeps a low profile, people know who he is. Brian Wilson, as a former Labour cabinet minister and the author of the official history of Celtic, was never going to remain anonymous either.

But McKay is different.

A Chief Financial Officer does not serve as the public face of anything. He does not step in front of cameras, answer questions, or engage directly with supporters. He could have lived his entire professional life in relative anonymity, done his job, earned a substantial salary, and never become a figure of public scrutiny.

Instead, he has put himself right in the centre of it.

Partly, that is down to the structure of the club. There are people who have been in meetings with Nicholson and McKay who say that Nicholson sits there and says virtually nothing while McKay answers everything. That, in itself, is a failure of leadership and a failure of boundaries. It ensured that McKay would end up in the spotlight far more than someone in his position ever should.

Some people shrink under scrutiny and expose their limitations.

Some make fools of themselves. McKay has gone further than that.

He has displayed a consistent streak of sarcasm, arrogance, and outright contempt. He has become one of the clearest embodiments of the club’s disregard for its own supporters that I have ever seen. That is his behaviour, through his own choices.

And behaviour like that has consequences.

The spotlight on him was avoidable. He could have kept his head down and simply done his job and stayed out of the line of fire.

He could have treated supporter concerns with respect; he is, after all, the CFO and his job is to keep the customers onside. Instead, through his own actions, he has placed himself directly at the centre of the storm. I have no sympathy for that. None whatsoever.

When you behave with that level of disdain towards the people who sustain the club, towards the customers of the business you represent, you forfeit any right to sympathy when the backlash comes. And the backlash will not pass.

As I said yesterday, this is the part they have not yet grasped. This does not go away. This does not fade, not ever. This becomes part of who you are in the eyes of the people you have treated with such contempt.

Chris McKay will never again be able to walk into a room without people knowing exactly who he is, and exactly how he is regarded. There will always be eyes on him. There will always be that moment of recognition, that shift in the atmosphere, that understanding of what he represented and what he allowed himself to be.

Some of us will be in those rooms. Some of us will never forget. That is not a threat. It is simply the reality that follows behaviour like this. It is the consequence of treating supporters with contempt, of dismissing them, of sneering at them, of believing yourself untouchable.

For the rest of his life, that will follow him.

It will be in the first line and the last line of his obituary at Celtic and beyond.

He has no one to blame for that but himself.

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