‘An embarrassing shambles’ ’10 players are going to leave’ ‘COVID season 2.0.’ The Nicholson nightmare intensifies

Four days after the transfer window closed, things have become even worse for Michael Nicholson!

Monday night at 11pm confirmed just how out of his depth the Celtic CEO is with the first team squad seriously depleted by the decision to generate a £20m transfer surplus to top up the £80m that was sitting in the club bank account at the end of June.

Having failed to sign Kasper Dolberg or David Fofana on Monday Nicholson should have realised that signing strikers really weren’t his strong point. On Tuesday he tried to resolve that issue by signings Kelechi Iheanacho.

After supporters were given two clear days to come to terms with their anger, mobilised through a Green Brigade statement, Friday morning brought fresh embarrassment with news that Celtic were working on a deal to sell Daizen Maeda up until the final hours of the window.

Having failed to replace Kyogo, Nicolas Kuhn or Adam Idah it seems that Nicholson got cold feet over selling Maeda.

That deal will have to wait until January, alongside a number of others. It seems that we have only reached the tip of the iceberg in terms of transfer problems inside Celtic.

Any one of the issues detailed above would be a source of embarrassment, at a well run club it would be investigated and dealt with.

At Celtic the issues are endemic, they seem the norm, barely any transfer goes through smoothly, with Nicholson involved problems are never far away. Gags about ‘penalty to Rangers’ don’t cut it with hard nosed agents and proper CEO’s.

Some have described Nicholson’s downsizing as managed decline but when you lose three out of your four top scorers over seven months the decline isn’t being managed, it is being accelerated.

The transfer issues listed above aren’t the result of incompetence or bad luck, with the volume of cases this is clearly part of a plan, even a strategy.

What is that strategy? In order to make life as easy as possible for next season’s in-house manager the last thing that is needed is Brendan Rodgers leaving in a blaze of glory, of trophies and European progress.

In less than 24 hours, an additional 160 CSCs and 29 Fan Media & Online platforms have signed the Open Letter to Celtic FC.

The signatories represent tens of thousands of Celtic supporters from around the world.

We urge Celtic FC to respond to the letter as a matter of urgency pic.twitter.com/39D9PX1W2o

— North Curve Celtic (@NCCeltic) September 4, 2025

A domestic treble and a place in the Last 16 of the Champions League would be a very demanding legacy.

A season of domestic decline and a mediocre Europa League campaign would be more agreeable for an obedient manager happy to work with project signings, generally under 23 with less than 100 senior appearances to their name playing alongside others brought in on loan from Manchester City.

At some stage Nicholson’s managed decline got out of control.

Against Kairat Almaty at home Adam Idah played as striker knowing that the club was trying to sell him, in the return leg Maeda took over well aware that he could be at a new club in a week’s time.

Idah and Maeda missed penalties, as did Luke McCowan.

As ever there has been complete silence from the club since Sunday’s draw at Ibrox.

The token welcomes for Iheanacho and Sebastian Tounekti were slaughtered by fans across social media, the only way of interacting with ‘the best run club in Europe’.

Hoping that these transfer issues blow over is probably the only ‘strategy’ known to Celtic’s in-house PR team.

With Nicholson at the helm the only certainty is that things are going to get worse before they get better with a stampede of players counting down to their January departures.

Someone once said ‘this isn’t the end, it is the beginning’.

Celtic fans have been fully alerted to how their club is being run, this time it won’t be Behind Closed Doors that the club self implodes.