Michael Nicholson

Very good article IMO.

 

I thought this was the best bit of an excellent article:

 

MICHAEL NICHOLSON is Mr Invisible. You rarely hear from him. Wouldn’t know what he thinks about much, really. For a chief executive of an institution such as Celtic, it is quite an achievement to dodge the glare of public attention with such aplomb.

Fail to deliver the squad that manager Brendan Rodgers is very clearly demanding by the end of the month, though, and all that will surely change.

Rodgers fielded questions on Friday over transfer dealings — or the lack of them — at Parkhead ahead of today’s Premiership opener with Kilmarnock and insisted he did not want to be drawn into the ‘negative and toxic energy around signings and everything else’.


Fair enough. It’s hard to listen to the Brodge, though, and not suspect that degree of friction that has marked many pre-seasons during his time at the club is already bubbling somewhere under the surface.

Celtic were rotten last season. They got their act together in the closing weeks of the campaign as Rangers fell to pieces and completed a domestic double, but it was not a good watch.


Their dealings in the transfer market were a complete mess. Chairman Peter Lawwell’s son Mark eventually bailed out of his role as head of scouting and recruitment in March as Rodgers largely refused to play the gaggle of new players he had brought in last summer

Five months on, Lawwell jnr has not been replaced. Indeed, from the outside, it is difficult to figure out exactly how the process of identifying, researching and recruiting new talent at the champions actually works.

Mark Cooper, a scout with pedigree in South America and the MLS, arrived in a full-time role a few months ago, but there does not appear to be any established recruitment set-up. There is certainly no sporting director or director of football.

It seems a most unconventional way for a club that purports to be modern and forward-facing to be operating. And that’s where Nicholson comes in.

Celtic’s squad, as it stands, is nowhere near good enough. Nowhere near what a club raking in fortunes through season books, with the guts of £70million in the bank, with £40m due from the Champions League and preparing to sell a £20m-plus asset in Matt O’Riley should be boasting.

At the moment, the group of players available to Rodgers is weaker than it was in May with Adam Idah still to complete a permanent move following a successful loan spell and Kyogo Furuhashi now the only first-team striker in the building.

However you dress it up, that’s not a good place to be with the new season off and running. It is faintly ridiculous. And it’s on Nicholson.

During the club’s pre-season tour of the United States, Rodgers made it perfectly clear that the chief executive and chief financial officer Chris McKay are his go-to guys when it comes to getting deals done


Their dealings in the transfer market were a complete mess. Chairman Peter Lawwell’s son Mark eventually bailed out of his role as head of scouting and recruitment in March as Rodgers largely refused to play the gaggle of new players he had brought in last summer.


Five months on, Lawwell jnr has not been replaced. Indeed, from the outside, it is difficult to figure out exactly how the process of identifying, researching and recruiting new talent at the champions actually works.

Mark Cooper, a scout with pedigree in South America and the MLS, arrived in a full-time role a few months ago, but there does not appear to be any established recruitment set-up. There is certainly no sporting director or director of football.

It seems a most unconventional way for a club that purports to be modern and forward-facing to be operating. And that’s where Nicholson comes in.

Celtic’s squad, as it stands, is nowhere near good enough. Nowhere near what a club raking in fortunes through season books, with the guts of £70million in the bank, with £40m due from the Champions League and preparing to sell a £20m-plus asset in Matt O’Riley should be boasting.

At the moment, the group of players available to Rodgers is weaker than it was in May with Adam Idah still to complete a permanent move following a successful loan spell and Kyogo Furuhashi now the only first-team striker in the building.

However you dress it up, that’s not a good place to be with the new season off and running. It is faintly ridiculous. And it’s on Nicholson.

During the club’s pre-season tour of the United States, Rodgers made it perfectly clear that the chief executive and chief financial officer Chris McKay are his go-to guys when it comes to getting deals done

Following the friendly win over Manchester City in North Carolina, he made a point of mentioning that he’d been involved in a lengthy meeting with them on transfer strategy.

‘Whilst the club is getting on with that, myself and the coaches were really focused on the improvement of this team, physically, tactically and technically,’ he said. In other words, it’s over to them. And if they don’t start getting a move on, it is Nicholson and McKay who should be taking the flak.

There are no deflector shields now. Lawwell jnr is no longer around to get the grief. And Lawwell snr, although still hanging around as chairman, should not be the focus either


Whilst it is faintly ridiculous he is back in a figurehead position following the failure to clinch 10-In-A-Row three years back, he’s getting on with other stuff these days.

Word from some sources is that the Celtic board do want to splash some of the cash they’ve been hoarding all these years. That they do want to be seen to make some kind of statement, to flex their muscles.

It’s not as simple as that, though. Almost every time Rodgers speaks now, he reiterates the need for quality in new signings rather than the quantity that last term delivered. That, by definition, does not mean a couple of million being scattered around here and there on project players.

At the club’s last annual general meeting, Rodgers was the one who spoke about the need to address Celtic’s utterly embarrassing record in European competition while Nicholson and others were cracking lame jokes about Rangers.

And in recent days, his words, although hardly inflammatory, have made it clear that resting on laurels cannot be accepted — even though the absolute state of their Ibrox (or should that be Hampden?) rivals suggests that Celtic could retain the title by playing 81-year-old Lisbon Lion Jim Craig at full-back rather than just unfurling the flag pre-match today.

The manager wants to do something in Europe. His reputation depends on it. Without hoping to achieve in that arena, you would have to ask why he is back here in Glasgow at all.

And his targets are not unreasonable. The Champions League has a new league phase this term. Celtic are one of 36 teams who will be playing eight games against two sides from each of the four pots


They need to finish in the top 24 to make the play-off round. It is something a club of their size and stature should be capable of. For too long now, though, Celtic have been a laughing stock in UEFA competition, a punchbag for duff teams from diddy nations –—and a source of shooting practice for too many of the bigger teams they come up against.

And, for too long, the board have given the impression that they don’t care. Just as long as they can finish above Rangers in the table and crack the funnies about them when the shareholders get together for a cup of tea at the AGM.

Nicholson has been part of that board for almost three years now. He’s been in the club for over a decade after initially coming on board as company secretary and head of legal.

Shamefully, the support have largely accepted failure in Europe too. But they shouldn’t. They should listen to what Rodgers has been saying this week. And amid his assertion that everything will be fine as long as new faces are in by the end of the month, his comments about not being able to ‘snooze’ in football felt like something of a warning to those above him in the chain.

‘In Europe, we have to be better. As simple as that,’ he stated. ‘You can’t beat about the bush. You look at where we’re at, we have to be better. In order to be better, you need quality.’


Majority shareholder Dermot Desmond, not so long ago, talked about the importance of European football as ‘a yardstick of football progression’. If that really is the case, Celtic are going backwards at a rate of knots. They need to turn those words into action. And they need to start signing a higher standard of player to do so.

Clearly, going by Rodgers’ account of that pow-wow in North Carolina, Nicholson is the guy entrusted with making that happen, so it’s time for him to start showing why, according to the last set of accounts, he gets paid in excess of £700,000-a-year — or face the music

 

'its not as simple as that to splash money'. I tell you something for nothing, if the shoe was on the other foot the huns would be showing us how simple it is

 

He must have the easiest CEO gig in football. Probably one of the easiest CEO gigs of any business under 200m market cap. No wonder he's keen not to rock the boat.

(Same goes for Lawwell)

 

* get the finger out

 

The ginger Lord Lucan is stealing a wage. £7000,000 a year and doing * all. He should be hounded out the club along with McKay and the puppet master Lawwell.

 

If that bloggers article annoyed them, then surely this will have as it is a pretty damning read that article.

 

Who's article is that?

Not that it matters because it's pretty much spot on.

 

Came from the daily mail

 

Sometimes the truth will out and its fairly obvious that Lawwell, Nicholson and The Board hate being called out, will only get worse if they * up this transfer window.

 

Who wrote that? McGowan?

We were not rotten last season - a tough watch at times, but rotten? 93 points and Scottish Cup rotten?

We did not win both competitions because Sevco collapsed.

What a * tosssr perpetuating that pathetic myth.


As for the rest of it. The folks in charge think they are the cleverest person in the room at all times. Many times they may be. But they are overcomplicatimg things.

1, hey is your guy for sale?
2. Ok we offer x amount
3. Ah ok not enough huh?
4. How much is enough?
5. Woah there pal, he’s not Messi, how about this much?
6. Look we really would like this guy, here is our final offer
7/yes. Ok thanks guys
7/no. Ok see ya later guys

That negotiation can be done in a day.

I do high value sakes which always come down to price, always. There is always a deal to be done if the buying side has a realistic budget and the selling side aren’t being stupid greedy.

This is not rocket science.

 

100%. That’s why Lawwell didn’t leave for Arsenal. He was on £1m a year after bonuses for taking us backwards on the park.

 

Spot on. Our form in the final 2 months of the season won us the competitions.

 

It also coincidently happened when all our first choice of the team was back from injurys. Proven what we all know, our depth is *.

 

Exactly. I think some fans seriously underestimated just how poor our squad was for much of the season. Turnbull, Mikey and Yang were all starting games leading up to Xmas. Last summer our transfers were abysmal

 

Interesting article following the blog that was forced by Lawwell to be taken down yesterday or Friday. Very similar points being made targeted at the board and the lack of ambition which we as fans know has existed for a long time.

 

No it was Gary Keown I think not McGowan.

 

But but but… we have been told by some in here that Rodgers wasn’t making digs at the board.