MICHAEL NICHOLSON has clarified why Celtic renewed their trademark rights to the ‘Old Firm’ name, after being quizzed by a supporter on the matter at the club’s AGM.

Celtic’s acting chief executive gave a composed performance in his first AGM since taking over from Dom McKay, allowing chairman Ian Bankier to take the lead for most of the afternoon.

But when a shareholder put forward the following query, Nicholson stepped in to clear up Celtic’s motivations.

"Can you tell me was there any assessment of the value of renewing this to the organisation?” asked the fan.

"And would any financial benefit outweigh the overwhelming bad publicity and associations which come to the club but hitching ourselves to this bandwagon?

"Do the board think renewing our trademark which associates our club with a toxic brand is sensible and something the vast majority of our fans would want?

"If so it shows how out of touch you guys are."

Nicholson replied: "The cost of renewal was low and the purpose of renewal was not to hitch ourselves to a brand, but to enable us to control the benefits of it use, not for the purposes of using it."

Nicholson’s other main contribution to proceedings was to give his backing to manager Ange Postecoglou’s January transfer plans, and to explain the scouting structure currently in place in order to give the Celtic manager the best possible chance of success in the next window and beyond.

“We do have a scouting department,” he said. “We have a recruitment team and over a number of years they’ve work with the board and the managers at the time to try and identify the best targets to bring to strengthen the squad.

“In each and every transfer window, we have a plan based on six, 12, 18, 24 months ahead.

“That’s the plan which has generated a) success for the club and b) substantial fees on the sale of players.

“Together with Ange, we are now building a football department that we can all be proud of in the short, medium and long-term.

“People talk about roles…director of football, sporting director…what’s important for us is getting the best people into the club to work with Ange and the team who are already there to take us forward.

“In the last six months, we’ve appointed a new head of sports science, we’re looking at data science and recruitment is a priority.

“We were busy in the summer. We knew we’d have work to do. Last summer we retained players for football reasons and in doing so we knew we’d have more players to move on. We also looked to add quality in the summer.

“We have a great team here who work on all aspects of player trading all year round. This window, with Ange, we started working before he arrived in June and all the way through to the last minutes of the window.

“We are happy with the impact the players have had. We have had a good start to the season. We are always wanting to improve the playing squad and the football operations.”