As questions surge around Celtic, where the Hell is Michael Nicholson?

During the last few days, as so many of our supporters have been focused on Robbie Keane and on the poverty of the shortlist for manager, and before O’Neill was identified as the successor, there has been one background question creeping more and more into the foreground. It should.

Because if you read the coverage, it overwhelmingly mentions one man as leading this process. That man is not the man who would normally lead such a search at a major football club. We are in a somewhat unique position at Celtic.

Decisions are taken by this club which would not be taken at any other club, and in ways they would not be taken at any other club. I do not believe our board of directors is fit for purpose, but our board absorbs a lot of blame for the conduct of one man.

We all know who that is. The news reports make it clear that Dermot Desmond was personally undertaking the managerial interviews, with Sky reporting that he held talks with Robbie Keane and was due to speak to Martin O’Neill as Celtic continued the search.

This is not terribly unusual for Celtic. We know, for example, that when Wilfried Nancy was appointed, Desmond deferred almost entirely to Paul Tisdale, and between them they made the decision. But it was still driven by the man in Ireland.

We know that members of the Celtic board wanted Enzo Maresca to be the manager prior to the appointment of Rodgers. It was Desmond who pushed for Rodgers, and that was the reason Desmond exploded into an apoplectic, childish, foot-stamping rage when Rodgers acted against him.

We know Desmond was one of the principal figures involved in hiring Rodgers the first time. We know he had a role in the hiring of Neil Lennon, although he was not the one who made the fateful decision in the shower room at Hampden. That was Lawwell himself.

Lawwell has had an input in some of these decisions going back, but the idea that Lawwell was the driving force behind all of them becomes harder to credit the more you look at the evidence, although his influence has to be considered. But this is Dermot Desmond’s call. The rights and wrongs of that do not seem to matter to him.

I do not have any sympathy with board members whose sole responsibility appears to be standing in the way of bullets aimed at Desmond. They eat a lot of dirt for his decision-making, but they are paid an awful lot of money to eat it.

If they do not like it, they can leave.

Someone inside Celtic Park is getting paid a very substantial executive salary where their main job responsibility appears to be standing between the mob and the large shareholder hiding behind him in Ireland.

And what a man to hide behind.

Michael Nicholson is the last guy in the world you would want beside you in a foxhole.

Nicholson is the great mystery man of this whole saga, in that it is a mystery where he is. It is a mystery how he can stomach his apparent exclusion, not only from this process, but from the whole process around Nancy, the process around rehiring O’Neill, and the negotiations which appear to be taking place without him at the centre.

He is the CEO. Lawwell, when he held that post, would never have allowed himself to be completely sidelined like that. Nicholson is weak.

It is a mystery how anyone at Celtic can believe they are getting value for money here. Is standing in front of the baying mob and taking it on Desmond’s behalf really a job worth that kind of money?

I would be willing to do it for his kind of cash, so sign me up for that right now. I will do it better than Nicholson does, because to me, and to a growing number of other fans, he does not seem to do anything at all.

We have joked on this blog about how a cardboard cut-out of Michael Nicholson would set you back about £85. You could buy one, stick it behind his desk, and I do not know that you would see any change in the way this club functions.

If he is not actively involved in the managerial search, then what is he for? If he is involved, nobody can claim that a shortlist any one of us could have put together in sixty seconds represents months of serious work for which he should be paid an exorbitant salary.

There really does need to be a serious management review conducted by serious professionals into the way this club does its business. That review should be conducted by sports professionals who know what they are doing and who know what they are looking at.

I do not think, in such circumstances, many of these people would survive scrutiny. Nicholson especially would be gone. There appears to be no reasonable or rational basis on which to continue employing him if he is not central to the most important football decision the club has to make this summer.

When you read coverage of Celtic right now, and all the various things going on within it, he appears to be a marginal figure at best.

I would not be terribly surprised if he has already had his wings clipped and the only reason he has not yet been turfed out of the building is that it would look chaotic when we still need a manager, still need a chairman and still need a head of football.

But the longer it goes on, the more obvious it becomes that he is a lame duck. Either that, or he is so useless that eventually even Desmond must recognise that a human shield cannot be earning executive money for standing there and absorbing blows.

Because that is what Nicholson appears to be now. A shield. Not a strategist. Not a leader. Not a chief executive driving the club forward. Someone who fronts the institution while the real decisions are taken elsewhere.

And that is not how a serious club operates.

A serious club would not have its largest shareholder running the managerial search from Ireland. A serious club would not have a chief executive who appears almost invisible during the biggest decision of the summer. A serious club would not have supporters asking, with complete legitimacy, who is actually in charge of the football department.

A serious club would have a proper structure. A chairman. A chief executive. A sporting director. A recruitment department. A football philosophy. A process. Clear lines of responsibility. All of them commanding respect.

At Celtic, we have shadows. We have whispers. We have Desmond. We have silence. And somewhere in the middle of it all, apparently, we have Michael Nicholson, drawing a huge salary while the club lurches from one major decision to the next as if governance is something that happens to other people.

This is not sustainable. It is not credible. It is not serious.

If Nicholson is comfortable being reduced to being a ceremonial shield for Dermot Desmond’s decision-making, then that tells us everything we need to know about him. That makes him pathetic. If he is not comfortable with it, then he should say something.

If he is being bypassed, he should resign. If he is involved, he should explain how this incoherent process represents months of work from a modern football club. Because that makes him absolutely incompetent.

Supporters are watching now. They are paying attention.

They see who is talking. They see who is hiding. They see who is making the decisions. And they see who is being paid for what amounts to not very much.

If Dermot Desmond is running this manager search, then Michael Nicholson has one question to answer.

What exactly are you for?

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