As regular readers of this blog will be aware, the podcast the other night featured Peter Kelly from the Collective, discussing his recent exchange with Tom English on Radio Scotland and defending the Collective against the way it has been portrayed in sections of the media. Much of that was familiar territory.
But there was something else that stuck with me all the way through that programme. It came just before Chick Young arrived to deliver a characteristically sycophantic assessment of Peter Lawwell’s career, telling us all how fortunate Celtic has been to have him.
In 2017, during an appearance on McIntyre’s show by Stewart Gilmour, chairman at St Mirren, Gilmour made the extraordinary claim that “Peter Lawwell runs Scottish football. He pulls the strings.” McIntyre then turned to Chick Young and added, “And that’s accurate, isn’t it? Celtic fans should be delighted at that.”
Some Celtic supporters were not delighted then, and we’re still not. Many of us understood immediately what that claim implied. More importantly, people inside Celtic should have understood it, because it was not benign praise. It was an allegation. And it was one that should have been challenged and shut down immediately.
Even the most casual observer of Scottish football could see what Gilmore was really saying.
He was not praising Lawwell. Gilmour was alleging undue influence.
He was implying that Celtic exercised improper control over the Scottish game. That is not a compliment. It is an accusation.
Because it stroked Lawwell’s ego and made him seem powerful and influential, it was allowed to go largely unchallenged. If not for bloggers and fan media, it might never have been questioned at all.
McIntyre repeated the line eagerly. Nobody asked him to defend it. Nobody asked him to provide evidence. No-one pressed him to explain what it actually meant. Nobody ever has, except those of us who recognised it for what it was: a smear.
Not just against Lawwell personally, but against Celtic as an institution.Because if Peter Lawwell really was “pulling the strings” of Scottish football, to what end was he doing so? For whose benefit? If Celtic truly ran the game, where is the evidence that this influence ever worked in Celtic’s favour? Show me one example. Just one.Nobody ever has. Nobody ever will.
I have challenged this claim repeatedly over the years and the silence has always been telling. There is no evidence because the idea itself is a fantasy. One man saying it does not make it true. Others repeating it does not make it true.All it really demonstrates is the depth of paranoia that exists in parts of Scottish football, a paranoia the game has indulged rather than challenged.Earlier this week, I wrote about the power of the Peter Lawwell Myth, and I will return to Lawwell in full once he has finally departed.Until then, his story remains unfinished. For years, sections of the media fuelled and sustained that myth, and Lawwell went along with it without ever stopping to interrogate what it actually implied.
When people claimed that Peter Lawwell “ran Scottish football,” they meant that Celtic ran Scottish football. And when they said that, they implied Celtic did so for its own benefit. That is a conspiracy theory, nothing more. Had anyone framed that claim even slightly differently, Lawwell himself would have exploded. In his earlier years, when he still understood his primary role as defending Celtic’s interests, he would have demanded evidence and forced the issue into the open.He would have asked journalists to state clearly where Celtic had acted to influence the wider game. He would have forced the issue, comprehensively dismantled the claim and we’d all be better off for it. I know this because I have asked those questions myself, many times. Like most conspiracy theories, this collapses under minimal scrutiny. But Lawwell never challenged it. Nobody at Celtic did. For a long time, he liked the idea. He liked how it sounded. He liked the aura of power it suggested, regardless of what it actually meant. It is the same psychological blind spot you see elsewhere. If someone described Donald Trump as the most ruthless president in American history, he would not hear the criticism. He would hear “the most.” He would wear it as a badge of honour. The negative meaning would simply not register.
The same myopia has existed at Celtic for years. Because while Lawwell may have heard praise, the rest of the football world heard something else entirely. Celtic’s success? That must be because they run the game. The Ibrox club’s failures? Proof that the system is rigged. Those ideas weren’t just hinted at—they were openly stated, repeated over and over, and left to fester. They remain common currency on Ibrox fan forums to this day. A lie left unchallenged does not disappear. It multiplies and embeds itself. It becomes part of the mythology of the game.
And that mythology now hangs over everything Celtic has achieved, diminishing real success by attributing it to imaginary power. I doubt Lawwell ever cared. He still sees it as a compliment. But that belief has consequences. Much of what is wrong at Celtic now flows from this deeply misguided idea. The idea that Celtic has been “running the game” without ever needing to lead it. Without ever needing to reform it. Without ever needing to act strategically or responsibly.
If Celtic really had been shaping Scottish football in its own image, the state of the game would tell you everything you need to know about the quality of that leadership. Because only now do you start to see how closely parts of Scottish football resemble Celtic’s own internal problems: cronyism, nepotism, insularity, and a catastrophic lack of strategic vision. Even that does not make the conspiracy theory true. It only highlights how damaging the myth has been.
All of this began as one man’s ego trip. The fact that people still ask us to address it years later shows how deeply it has lodged itself in the Scottish football psyche. Repetition does not make it true. Longevity does not grant it legitimacy. Belief does not turn fantasy into fact. It was never true. It is still untrue. And it has caused real damage, to Celtic and to the wider game, damage we are still living with today.
