Hero or villain? How will Peter Lawwell be remembered at Celtic after 17-year tenure as CEO finally ends?

Dominic McKay has of course already started in his role as Lawwell’s successor, and was by the side of new manager Ange Postecoglou when he was officially unveiled last week.

But as of today, Lawwell is officially no longer in Celtic’s employ, despite continuing to advise McKay from the end of the telephone line whenever he needs him.

Love him or loathe him, there is no denying that his departure marks the end of a hugely significant era in the history of Celtic Football Club.

The banner headlines are that Lawwell presided over an era of arguably unprecedented success at Celtic. Twenty-nine major honours, 13 league titles. That Celtic have been the dominant team in the country over the course of his leadership is beyond question.

But instead of being carried off into the sunset down London Road upon the shoulders of a jubilant and grateful support, if anything, it could be argued that he ended up being chased out by them.

And it may be that final season, the disastrous 10 in-a-row campaign, that becomes his legacy.

Lawwell himself would have scarcely believed the changes he would witness during his long tenure, from securing nine titles in a row to blowing the record tenth, adapting to a top-flight landscape without Rangers, landing a quadruple Treble, to the managerial appointments that shaped Celtic’s fortunes on the field.

So, what were the key moments that shaped Lawwell’s time at Celtic, and how exactly will he remembered by the support?

Well, perhaps the issue that most Celtic supporters would criticise Lawwell for, ironically enough, is his financial prudence. To many, his zealous watch on the Celtic balance sheet spilled over into penny pinching, with a sizeable section of fans placing the blame for Rangers coming up on Celtic’s blindside this season firmly on his shoulders.

To his critics, Lawwell failed to seize the chance to bury the threat of Rangers for good by downsizing when Celtic’s great rivals were making their way up through the lower divisions, thus squandering the opportunity to ring-fence the lion's share of Champions League money for years to come.

And when it came to the chance to make history last season by securing a tenth title in a row, his unwillingness to push the boat out to bring in the likes of Ivan Toney or previously, John McGinn, were cited as key factors in Celtic falling short. Not to mention his seemingly impulse decision to appoint Neil Lennon as manager in the Hampden showers shortly after the then interim boss had led Celtic to the final trophy of the treble Treble.

Defenders of Lawwell could feasibly point to the fact that he indeed did sanction a decent amount of spending last summer to support Lennon, with the club bringing in £5m signing Vasilis Barkas, £4.5m Albian Ajeti and splashing out around £2m just to have Shane Duffy on loan for the season.

That all of these signings turned out to be duds (Barkas and Ajeti may yet be able to turn that perception around) has little to do with Lawwell.

He also resisted the temptation to cash in on stars who wanted to move on from the club last summer like Odsonne Edouard and Kristoffer Ajer, perhaps knowing full well that he would have been castigated for selling Celtic’s top talents had the season gone awry. As it did, anyway. And he was roundly castigated, in any case.

Lawwell may also point to perhaps the one managerial appointment of his reign that no one could argue with as an example of his willingness to splash the cash, luring Brendan Rodgers to Celtic and sparking an unparalleled run of domestic success.

Then again, his detractors may point out that it was Lawwell’s penny-pinching that not only prevented Celtic making any headway in European competition during that time, but ultimately drove Rodgers to the exit door.

The signing policy at Celtic was dramatically altered during the Lawwell years, with the focus moving towards identifying unpolished diamonds and polishing them up with a view to selling them on at great profit in the future.

There were undeniable hits using this strategy, such as Virgil van Dijk, who earned the club over £17.5m in profit following his moves to Southampton and Liverpool through his transfer fee and a sell-on clause.Victor Wanyama, who was sold on to Southampton again for £12.5m after being picked up for around £900,000. And Moussa Dembele, who was picked up for relative chump change by exploiting cross-border transfer rules and bumped on after two goal-laden seasons for £25m.

Then again, the likes of Mo Bangura, Amido Balde and Marian Shved – among others – have proven that there are at least as many misses as hits when pursuing such a policy.

In terms of his popularity among supporters and his relationship with the fanbase, those areas too are somewhat patchy.

He was at times accused of being too accommodating to the Green Brigade, yet found himself within the crosshairs of their protests on many occasions. Having banned them or closed their section periodically due to their transgressions, he was unlikely to find them in sympathetic mood when the wheels came off last season.

So it was that he found himself the subject of ‘Wanted’ posters calling for his sacking or resignation.

There were also supporters who felt he should have taken a more hardline stance with Resolution 12, and pushed for an investigation into the UEFA licence granted to Rangers in 2011, while the wider support were critical of his more recent decisions over the mid-season trip to Dubai and subsequent PR disaster that followed.

After 17 years, it may well have been the case that a man who should on paper be lauded as a hero of the club, simply hung around too long and became – to many, in any case – the villain.

In the end, if football comes down to showing your medals, then Lawwell’s record of delivering silverware matches up to any. Ultimately though, there are also those who will remember the missed opportunities as much as the triumphs.