This season had been one of positivity so far at Celtic, even if the Hoops did taste a defeat in Ange Postecoglou’s first Old Firm.

Proceedings at board level looked rosier than last season and the Bhoys were happily going about their business during a new era for the club.

What’s the club?

However, little did we know that the environment upstairs has actually been rather toxic and confusing this season.

Dominic McKay became the club’s new CEO at the beginning of the summer when he took over from Peter Lawwell who retired.

However, it hasn’t been plain sailing for him as he was forced to step down from his role last Friday.

The reasons are complicated but in an article for The Athletic, Kieran Devlin helped to clear up the factors at play.

He wrote: “Sources have spoken of receiving mixed, contradictory messages from different club figures. One described Celtic as being “painfully slow” in some discussions and several mentioned not receiving replies to messages for days or sometimes weeks. When replies did come, they would sometimes be from a different club figure.

“One source described it as “messy, everyone stepping on each other’s toes”. More than one target is said to have been missed out on during this process.”

Fans fuming

In this instance, it appears to be a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

Postecoglou wasn’t in charge of transfers but it’s quickly become apparent that McKay wasn’t the only one going out and negotiating deals either.

In fact, the former CEO also had to contend with Dermot Desmond and his son Ross, Peter Lawwell, Jay Lefevre - their head of scouting – and finally, the club’s now acting CEO, Michael Nicholson.

Now, communicating with the board makes sense but when you have six different people negotiating the one same transfer, proceedings are obviously going to get messy.

This doesn’t bode well for supporters; particularly after hearing they missed out on some primary targets.

Celtic did still acquire 12 first-team players in the market but if they lose out on the Premiership title again, questions will be asked of what happened this summer.

That’s especially after McKay seemingly had the Hoops’ best interests at heart.

Devlin added in his column: “That long-term vision, aspiring to be something more than just trying to win the Scottish Premiership every season, had been absent from Celtic for some time — at least in the public realm — and many fans bought into it.”

With Desmond reportedly not keen on a modernisation of the football club, it’s claimed by other outlets that McKay actually jumped before he was pushed.

All Celtic needed was some stability and in modernising the club, it could have taken them to greater success in Europe too. It will also have improved the profile of players they could sign in forthcoming windows.

That, however, now looks unlikely. Fans should be extremely displeased by the events that have played out.

AND in other news, Ange could discover Celtic's new Christie by signing £6.3m-rated "top player" in Jan...