What were Dom McKay's Celtic plans before shock Parkhead exit

However, just months on McKay has already vacated his role as club chief executive with 'personal reasons' said to be behind his shock exit.

McKay had spoken candidly about his ambition for the club, with three key aspects of focus in the hope of setting the club up for success.

He wanted to overhaul the entire running of the club, by looking into the football operations, the club as a business and engagement from the club.

But, McKay's key priority for the club was to be winners again. 

Outlining his role in his first time in front of the media, McKay explained:  "Ange is the manager of Celtic and will lead the football side of our organisation.

"I will look across the whole organisation at the football, at the business side, at the engagement side and we'll make sure we've got the right structure for the next decade.

"What's really important to me is that we win and have success, and sustained success.

READ MORE: Is Michael Nicholson the man to fill the void left by Peter Lawwell at Celtic after Dom McKay's sharp exit?

“My challenge is to give leadership across the whole club, to make sure every part is benchmarked to be best in class."

While winning was pinpointed as the priority for McKay, he also had visions of doing it in style, leading to Postecoglou's appointment.

There have been evident signs of attacking style and flair from Postecoglou's side already, and from the start McKay outlined that as another of his focuses for the future at Celtic.

"We want to get back to successful ways", said McKay. "But we want to do that with a style, a panache and a flair which Ange's teams in Japan and Australia have delivered.

"It's about winning but it's also about doing it in a certain way."

From the outset, McKay was quick to reveal his hope of making a mark on Celtic, with aims to improve on all aspects of the club and assert the Hoops as a 'best in class' across football, business and engagement.

But McKay labelled his main priority from the start as settling in the new manager before taking stock of the club.

"There's a lot to do, and that's the great challenge. The club is in fantastic fundamental shape", McKay said.

"We had a disappointing season last year but our challenge is to bring about that success, having winning teams on the park.

Dom McKay with Ange Postecoglou

"The priority for me is to settle Ange in, make sure we have a productive pre-season and then start to evolve and modernise the club.

"One of  the things any chief exec wants to do is look across the whole organisation.

"This is a fantastic club with solid foundations but I want to make my own mark and part of that is looking across how we might want to modernise and how we might want to evolve; whether that's in the business side, football side or the engagement side.

"We'll take our time, we'll put the right structures in place to make sure we have got a modern forward looking club, and as part of that, a critical component, is to have a winning team led by a brilliant manager and that's what I've managed to secure."

It's fair to say McKay's appointment came at a critical time for the club with a disconnect between supporters and the boardroom and fears over communication channels.

For McKay it was clear that supporters returning to the stadium would help bridge the disconnect while he reckoned the "new journey" the club were on might galvanise supporters.

"I think the focus is about a new journey we are on together which is about coming back out with the team and performing and also getting the supporters back into the stadium", he said.

"I'm keen to try and have that engagement. Importantly this is really a big family and I think the best way for us to make sure we are all pushing in the same direction is we make sure we know what each other think.

"Engagement is two way for me, it can't just be about us saying, it has to be about us listening as well."

Celtic have enjoyed huge success in their transfer business model bringing in players for small fees before reaping the rewards in profitable transfers.

But another strand of McKay's vision for the club was a blend of transfer strategies leading to strong first-team and academy prospects.

Explaining his goal in the market, he said: "We want to make sure we have got the best possible team on the park.

"We have got a lot of work to do but we are in great shape to be able to do that.

"I think we just want to make sure we have the right model, it might be a blend. I think the key thing is that the manager gets the support and he has the right sort of team around him."

One area of McKay's vision at Celtic which has come under increased scrutiny after his shock departure is his involvement in bringing Postecoglou to the club.

Speaking during the manager's announcement he told fan media and blog sites: "He's 100 per cent my man, there is no doubt about that."

But Postecoglou cooled talks of McKay's influence in bringing him to Celtic after the chief executive stepped down from his role.

"We have to be careful with the narrative of who brought me to the club,” Postecoglou said after watching his team defeat Ross County.

“I was as surprised as anyone that Dom resigned but I am going to be respectful of him and his family.

"When people cite personal reasons, there's reasons for that. Michael is now in charge and that's good because I already know him.”

The aforementioned Michael, is Michael Nicholson who has stepped up from director of legal and football affairs to chief executive on an interim basis.

Celtic chairman Bankier was positive when revealing Nicholson's new role after McKay's departure adding: "Michael is an absolute team player and he will lead an experienced and talented team of executives and colleagues.

“He has a solid grip on how to achieve our immediate and future objectives.”

It remains to be seen what direction Nicholson wants to go in as Celtic CEO but it's be expected a period of stability would be essential after McKay's shock exit.