Peter Lawwell: Changing of Celtic guard offers different landscape for Dominic McKay

When the news came through on Friday morning that Lawwell was leaving, it didn’t really come as a surprise. It’s been mooted for a long time. Seventeen years at the helm of a club like Celtic is an outrageously good innings. The fact that much of it was successful is a credit to the job Lawwell did. Doubles, trebles, quadruples. Unheralded players brought in for a song and sold for a fortune. European nights that will live forever in the folklore of the club. Shunsuke Nakamura against Manchester United, Scott McDonald against AC Milan, Tony Watt against Barcelona, Olivier Ntcham against Lazio.

He could have done more, of course he could. In recent times, Celtic’s obsession with achieving the blessed 10 blurred whatever vision they might have had in becoming more of a relevance in Europe in the eyes of their disgruntled supporters. Their domestic dominance grew as their results in the Champions League and Europa League fell. Where before in the Lawwell years they were competing with and occasionally beating the biggest guns, they’re now losing to clubs with smaller budgets than their own.

For a club that revels in its own European story, they lost their way in recent times. “The 10” became a Holy Grail wrapped in kryptonite. With the money they’ve earned through terrific transfer business and multiple helpings of Champion League lucre, you feel that they should be way further ahead than they are in European terms. Any fair assessment of Lawwell’s era as a whole would have to conclude that he was a significant success, but it could have been more.

Lawwell has not only driven Celtic these past 17 years, he’s also been the most powerful man in the Scottish game for much of it, certainly in the last decade. Lawwell was never one to shout from centre stage. He much preferred to pull strings from the wings. He had a hawk-like vision for football politics and a chess player’s capacity to be three or four moves ahead. Until some may say he lost his touch this season – the Dubai farce being the latest manifestation of how his decision-making had gone awry.

It was Lawwell’s influence that helped put Ian Maxwell in his role as as chief executive of the Scottish FA and it’s been Lawwell’s support that’s helped Neil Doncaster in his role as chief executive of the SPFL.