Dominic McKay reminds us of the Celtic we might have had.

There are a lot of reports doing the rounds tonight about Dominic McKay, suggesting that he has broken his silence on his time at Celtic.

He has talked about it very briefly, but if you are seeing those headlines and are tempted to click on them, there is nothing of any real value in there except that he speaks very highly of the club.

Without, notably, speaking very highly of many of the people inside it.

It is obvious that he enjoyed his time at Celtic. It is obvious that leaving the club was not his choice. But in terms of what actually happened, he will not speak about it.

The fact that he will not speak about it, and appears so determined not to speak about it, strongly suggests that he cannot speak about it. Whether that is because of a formal non-disclosure agreement or some other settlement arrangement, none of us can say for certain.

But it certainly looks as though he will never publicly disclose the reasons for his departure.

It is tempting to suggest that, in this case, any such agreement would be less about protecting the club as an institution than protecting certain people inside the club.

Because don’t forget, Celtic is run by a tiny group of people for their benefit. They make every single key decision. If McKay was forced out, as many of us strongly suspect, then making sure he never tells his side of the story is about protecting reputations.

Otherwise, people might want to know what his great crime was.

I think most of us have a suspicion that his great crime was change.

He wanted to bring restructuring, modernisation and a new way of doing things to an organisation which was not ready for it then and is not ready for it now.

I am going to talk a little more about that tomorrow in the context of Celtic Supporters Limited, who published a very interesting report during the week.

I read it and found it fascinating. I agree with almost every word in it, except one part. That is what I want to discuss tomorrow.

Celtic is not a club that is ever going to voluntarily embrace change.

Today, someone sent me a great article by Charlie Methven in which he said he believes Celtic underuse the resources available to the club and have no real strategic plan for turning the cash in the bank into even more money. There are ways to do that. There are things Celtic could and should be exploring, but aren’t and won’t.

This is where our board lacks guts and imagination. It is obvious that these people need a kick up the backside. It is equally obvious that a man with the credentials, background and talents Dom McKay possesses could have been a star at Celtic.

McKay might have brought real and genuine change to the club. He was well placed to do it. He was smart enough to do it. He appeared courageous enough to put ideas on the table and try to drag the club into this century.

A lot of us have never reconciled ourselves to the manner in which he left.

We never will.

I have always suspected that what happened was simply this: he was brought in, asked to put together his plan and present it to the board. When he did, they rejected it out of hand.

If you have been brought in to do a job, if you have set down your proposals for doing that job, and then the people at the top of the house tell you that you are not going to get to do any of it, you have two choices.

You can work inside their system, in their world, which you already know does not work.

Or you can go.

A man with modern thinking is not going to stay and work at an antiquated business which refuses to change.

When you look at who ended up sitting in the CEO’s chair next, it becomes even harder to bear.

Michael Nicholson does not have a shred of the talent or vision that Dom McKay appeared to have. Nobody can credibly argue that Celtic are a better institution with Nicholson at the helm than they would have been had McKay remained.

The jobs McKay had before Celtic, and the jobs he has had since, all suggest he was an outstanding candidate for CEO and could have done an outstanding job here. But he never got the chance to properly start, let alone finish.

The tragedy is that after he left, Celtic reverted straight back to stasis.

We have been stuck in that mud ever since.

Nicholson was a horrendous choice for such a high-profile job. He possesses none of the obvious skills one would imagine are required. His lack of communication since taking the role has been shameful.

That was another role McKay performed effortlessly.

Front of house.

He was willing to talk to the media. He was willing to get in front of supporters. He understood that communication is not an optional extra at a football club of this size. Losing such an outstanding communicator and ending up with this pale imitation instead is only one of the things wrong with the appointment of Nicholson in the first place.

I despair of this club almost all of the time now.

Its leadership is a joke.

Just hearing McKay talk about Celtic and his time there reminds you that he remains a diehard Celtic man, and someone who will not swing the boot even now. Even if he could, I do not know that he would.

But this whole club would look very different had he been in post from the moment he got the job until now.

A lot of the criticisms Charlie Methven levelled at Celtic would not apply, because these are areas I believe McKay would have pursued. These are things I believe we would have done.

Both Methven and Celtic Supporters Limited have pointed out that you do not have to spend money to lose money.

Revenue you do not go out and get is lost money. Revenue you do not even reach for is lost money. The failure to exploit your advantages is lost money. The failure to reach for the next rung of the ladder costs you money.

These people may congratulate themselves on being the smartest kids in the class, but this is still a third-rate operation without the imagination or ambition to be anything more.

That is down to the people in the boardroom. It is down, in particular, to a chief executive who is not worth a damn.

Just listening to Dom McKay reminds us of the club we could have had these past five years. That makes it a tragedy. That makes it a waste.

And I wonder how much more waste there is going to be. How many more years of squandered opportunities are we going to have to endure?

Because it does not have to be like this.

That is the thing that comes across most clearly when you listen to McKay and then read Methven. It does not have to be like this.

We are here because of choices made within our own walls.

The only thing that keeps Celtic in this prison is Celtic.

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