NO McKAY UNTIL JULY

be allowed to take up his Hoops post until the scheduled July 1 date.

Celtic’s need for fresh leadership became even more urgent yesterday when outgoing chief executive Peter Lawwell confirmed to the stock exchange that manager Neil Lennon had been stood down from his position on Tuesday night, as revealed by Record Sport.

The crisis-hit champions are now in an apparent state of disarray with McKay expected to have to head-hunt a director of football, appoint a new first-team boss and reconstruct the playing squad in the space of a few weeks before the start of next season.

But notoriously hard nosed SRU chief Dodson effectively killed off any chance of McKay being allowed to leave his role as chief operating officer sooner than originally agreed.

Dodson said yesterday: “What’s happening at Celtic is out of my control. It’s not something I’m utterly familiar with but I do know Dom is going to have a very full in-tray when he gets there.

“The issue for us is that he has a notice period that he has to serve here and we need stability in our business too. So I expect Dom to be here with us for a while.

“Until we make sure the business is in good enough shape – that’s the only time we’ll consider allowing Dom to move across to Celtic. And that depends on how quickly we can replace him.

“If there is a point when we can let Dom go earlier then I’m sure we’d try to work around that, but as it stands we are some way away from that.”

Celtic announced yesterday morning that long-serving Lennon had ‘resigned’ as manager – just two days after the Northern Irishman had restated his determination to stay put and overhaul the squad ahead of next season.

As we revealed yesterday morning, Lennon was, in fact, advised his position was no longer tenable late on Tuesday.

That followed crisis talks involving Lawwell and the club’s principal shareholder Dermot Desmond in the wake of Sunday’s 1-0 defeat at Ross County.

Assistant boss John Kennedy and coach Gavin Strachan are now expected to take charge of the team for the remaining eight games of the top-flight season.

But McKay will be expected to take a leading role in Celtic’s long-term restructuring and recruitment planning after the decision to pull the plug on Lennon now.