Rumours, eh? Somewhere out there, in someone’s Celtic simulation, the tectonic plates under Celtic Park are grinding again…
Celtic Fans Collective protest at Celtic Park ahead of the Celtic v Falkirk match. 29 October 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
Lawwell, the man who never really leaves, is retiring immediately, apparently for the second, third, or fifteenth time, depending on which version of the simulation you’re trapped in. Sorry if you’re still in single digits. Much pity for those debuting in this rodeo.
Michael Nicholson has floated off to UEFA, that bureaucratic cloud city in the sky where good soldiers go after keeping the peace in Desmond’s empire, provided they haven’t angered the overlord, or they know where the skeletons sleep. Two more non-execs are vaporised in the same breath, so quickly we missed who they were.
And in walks the fresh face, from Leicester, the new CEO, bright-eyed and briefed to the hilt. Another ‘fresh start’ that smells faintly of an expensive education and purchased morals, or maybe of deja vu and and hollow assurances. Who knows anymore. As I said, this is not my first rodeo.
Celtic Fans Collective protest at Celtic Park ahead of the Celtic v Falkirk match. 29 October 2025. Photo Vagelis Georgariou (The Celtic Star)
You’d think by now they’d have learned. But this is Celtic, where the corridors of power echo with the spectres of false dawns and the eternal clinking of glasses at Parkhead’s corporate level. It’s a place where ‘change’ means everything shifts so that everything can stay exactly the same.
It was like this the last time. Lawwell bows out, McKay breezes in with reformist zeal, Nicholson smiles benignly in the background. Two months later, the guillotine drops. McKay’s gone. Lawwell’s back in some non-exec emeritus overlord capacity, and Nicholson becomes a man-shaped shadow of the man he replaced. Not quite a myrmidon, too meek to be a henchman, too overqualified to call a lackey, and such a light shade of pale you’ve never been sure he wasn’t a hologram.
Alfred Dunhill Links Championship 2024 Dermot Desmond
“Experiment over,” the cynics said. They were right.
Three years later, we’re back in the same labyrinth, with the same minotaur waiting at the centre. Or are we? Who knows anymore. Reality is optional on Planet Celtic, and most of us opt against it in these parts.
Every so often, the faithful hope for a reckoning, for modernisation, transparency, vision. Instead, we get reshuffles that resemble hostage swaps. We get Desmond’s divine right reaffirmed, and press statements so bland they anaesthetise, or so venomous they feel like we’re eavesdropping on a fiery domestic fallout. And we get the creeping sense that no matter who’s at the front of the ship, the same hands are always gripping the wheel behind the curtain.
Celtic fan protest poster outside Celtic Park on 29 October 2025. Photo The Celtic Star
The truth, or is it? Celtic isn’t just a football club anymore. It’s a long-running psychological experiment on what happens when a support is asked to believe in change while being served the same dish of corporate cryptomnesia every season, on a maddening, inner-ear-piercing loop.
So yes, in someone’s simulation, Lawwell retires, Nicholson drifts off to UEFA, Susan gets the keys to the executive office, and somewhere in the mist, Desmond is still calling the shots.
The fans watch, often bewildered but rarely surprised anymore. Because in Simulation Celtic, the revolution is always just another round of musical chairs.
Celtic Chairman Peter Lawwell, Dermot Desmond, largest shareholder and Michael Nicholson CEO are seen during the Scottish Premiership match between Celtic and Falkirk at Celtic Park on October 29, 2025. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
Still, the hand goes up. Then more of them. But then many drop off, perhaps willing to believe that in this episode, in this loop, we’ll open our eyes to meadows and sunlight.
Welcome to Simulation Celtic, the endless, continuous loop of it.
The overthrow is never seen through to the end. The head of the beast is never severed.
Or does it happen in this simulation? Is this the final rodeo? Or do we go back to the start and begin again?
Niall J
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Celtic in the Eighties and Willie Fernie – Putting on the Style both by David Potter. Photo The Celtic Star
Danny McGrain signing copies of Celtic in the Eighties by David Potter. Photo: Celtic Star Books
Who knows what to expect at the upcoming AGM?
Certainly not something I would usually have much interest in whatsoever.
Not a fan of the level of greed that exists within the PLC, where only the corporate sector within the club benefits so hugely from.
Even if we see a case of musical chairs adopted, i fail to see how a change in club policy will be applied imo?
A club policy, where a strong player trading model has been created. Required as no real TV deal in place within Scottish football.
A player trading model so profitable in recent times, to cover the losses made within it.
Problems still exist, that it will mean a high turn around in players, each summer, which effects stability, to especially compete at CL level for ourselves.
Made all the harder, for some time now, that we haven’t got a decent development model in place. Made harder as one doesn’t even exist within Scottish football.
Don’t class the lowland league as a development model, when only used to give playing time for potential youngsters in the making imo.
Recruitment is always going to remain an issue, with the price range we operate within, and trying to attract players.
Becoming harder with the SPFL hardly an easy sell for ourselves, especially with the approach taken by nearly every team against ourselves.
Again cheating mibs allowed to make a total mockery of the rules of the game, and to a far higher degree when we are playing.
There will always remain issues for board bashing within our club, no matter who is tasked with the major decision making process that’s involved imo?
So is a total change in club policy going to be forthcoming?
Don’t see it actually happening regardless of what names are sitting in seats within the boardroom.
Don’t believe lawwell is actually involved within the recruitment process any longer, which still needs to be clarified, but doubtful it would be truly believed, that he hasn’t any involvement whatsoever.
Regardless, still think it was the wrong decision to allow him to return to a position within our club.
But where was a collective then, when announced and allowed to happen, cause of such a high feel good factor within the club?
Thankfully as much as I detest the operations of a PLC within a football club, especially ours, I try not let them get to me, as they did during the 10iar season ever again.