All Peter Lawwell’s Fault in David Murray’s Blame Game

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The Celtic Star

·27 June 2025

All Peter Lawwell’s Fault in David Murray’s Blame Game

So, David Murray has broken cover again. And, as ever, his historical revisionism seems like another pathetic attempt to repaint his own legacy…

Walter Smith is unveiled by David Murray (L) as the new Rangers manager, at their Murray Park training ground on January 10, 2007 in Glasgow, Scotland. Smith replaces Paul Le Guen and will be assisted by former Rangers favourite Ally McCoist. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

His comments about Peter Lawwell — Celtic’s long-serving CEO and current (non-exec) Chairman — are revealing, not just for what they say about Lawwell, but for what they expose about Murray himself.

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I certainly won’t attempt to claim Peter Lawwell is beyond reproach, far from it. His tenure at Celtic in my view was marked by a paradox: financial prudence that kept us on a sound footing, but also a small-mindedness that arguably cost the club European progress and allowed stagnation to creep into our football operations.

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Lawwell, it seemed to me, often acted like a man who believed controlling every lever was more important than empowering those we shelled out big wages on to progress our football operations. Managers — from Ronny Deila to Brendan Rodgers — ran into that problem.

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Peter Lawwell’s obsession with being the smartest guy in every room, alongside his insistence on winning on every deal in the transfer market, at crucial moments, undermined our European progression in particular, and arguably still does. He treated the fans, some fans in particular, with corporate contempt at times, saw the club as a business first and a football institution second, and left behind a bloated and conservative structure that arguably helped lead to our 2020–21 collapse.

READ THIS…The Death of Rangers in 55 Quotes

Cetlic Chief Exectutive Peter Lawwell looks on during the Scottish Cup Final between Celtic and Aberdeen at Hampden Park on May 27, 2017. (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

But if Peter Lawwell did wield too much influence in Scottish football, then whose fault is that?

David Murray, who once used every ounce of Rangers’ establishment backing to tilt the Scottish game in his club’s favour, now cries foul about ‘too much influence’ — from a guy who didn’t have the SFA, SPL and compliant media in his back pocket.

Let’s not forget, Lawwell might well have tried to consolidate influence, but Murray owned the room. He didn’t just operate within the establishment — he arguably WAS the establishment.

Let’s remind ourselves what Murray’s legacy really is.

This was a man who swaggered through the Scottish game like a professional gambler, seemingly bankrolling an unsustainable empire, one it seemed was built on huge amounts of debt, secrecy, and tax avoidance.

“For every fiver Celtic spend, we’ll spend a tenner,” and all that. Turns out those tenners were borrowed and then went unpaid.

When Rangers collapsed under the weight of that hubris, it wasn’t Peter Lawwell’s schadenfreude that was to blame. It was Murray’s own reckless mismanagement and moral cowardice. He sold the club, for a pound, to a charlatan – and by his own admittance without carrying out his due diligence on Craig Whyte – because he knew what was coming.

Dermot Desmond (L) and Chief Executive of Celtic Peter Lawwell look on prior to the UEFA Europa League Round of 32 first leg match between Celtic FC and FC Internazionale Milano at Celtic Park Stadium on February 19, 2015. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

There’s a Rangers supporter on one of their forums this morning talking about Paul Murray and saying he had a drink with him on the day they won the league in the season when Craig Whyte was coming in. Murray told the fn that Whyte didn’t have the money. If he knew then so too did David Murray, or did he simply believe the ‘Motherwell born Billionaire’ that was in the Record, whose owners are the publishers of Murray’s book.

Succulent book publishing and all that.

The “demise of the club” that Murray speaks of wasn’t Lawwell’s orchestration — it was Murray’s own doing.

Was Lawwell pleased to see a wounded Rangers, and then their demise? Possibly, but I’d wager he missed the income that rivalry brought to Celtic’s coffers. But that’s football rivalry, we all enjoyed the jelly and ice-cream. Was he a “pivotal figure” during Rangers’ wilderness years? Only insofar as he kept Celtic ticking over in contrast to the Ibrox implosion. But let’s not pretend he did anything to challenge the scandal that unfolded.

In fact, many Celtic fans rightly criticise Lawwell for his passivity during the Resolution 12 campaign and his reluctance to hold Scottish football authorities to account.

If anything, Lawwell wasn’t enough of a disruptor. Possibly Peter Lawwell the Celtic supporter would have been happy to bury them but as Celtic CEO his duty was to protect Celtic’s interests and that meant, however distasteful, doing little or nothing to prevent some form of a football operation continuing at Ibrox post liquidation.

The truth is Peter Lawwell could have buried Rangers once and for all and that was only possible because of David Murray recklessness. You may recall Dermot Desmond speaking up for Rangers in their darkest hour – again the future landscape of the game in Scotland without a Rangers was certainly a consideration.

So, when Murray says Lawwell “wielded far too much influence,” what he’s really doing is turning the deflector shields up to max. It’s a classic PR move — paint Lawwell as a Machiavellian figure so that Murray’s own failings look more forgivable in comparison. Most folks with a memory of those times will not be hoodwinked.

Lawwell has his faults — plenty of them, and we’ve written on them extensively over the years that followed — but Scottish football’s greatest scandal wasn’t authored in the Celtic boardroom. That was all Murray who used unlawful EBTs and secretive side letters to cheat his way to success at the expense of Celtic and other clubs too.

And history will remember it, however he may wish to revise it. Few if any Rangers fans are convinced by his spin and it makes you wonder who is actually going to pay for his book. He’d have been better keeping his head down and enjoying a quiet life.

Niall J

Here’s the book’s cover and the details on it from the publishers Reach, owners of Daily Record,…

THE UNTOLD, INSIDE STORY OF MY LIFE AT RANGERS FC AND IN BUSINESS

FOR THE FIRST TIME, AND IN HIS OWN WORDS, SIR DAVID MURRAY OFFERS A DEEPLY PERSONAL INSIGHT INTO HIS EXTRAORDINARY LIFE

‘I could fight or I could give up. Turn left or turn right.’

For 50 years Sir David Murray has been a towering figure in Scottish business, sport and philanthropy. His family name is synonymous with steel but his rise to power owes as much to mettle as it does to metal.

At the age of 24 he was involved in an horrific car crash in which he lost both of his legs. As his life hung in the balance, his days in hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness, were nightmare moments but ones that would define him. In the aftermath, when he finally pulled through, he had stark choices to make.

This is a man who thrived on the big stage, as the owner of Rangers Football Club during an unprecedented era of success. He oversaw some memorable European campaigns, all while rubbing shoulders with the likes of Paul Gascoigne, Graeme Souness and Sir Sean Connery.

Mettle is a truly remarkable tale of never-say-die triumph over unimaginable adversity.

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