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Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

In 551-words, major shareholder Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

The man he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and needed putting in their place. And the man he again turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an continuous circuit of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Based on things he has expressed recently, he has been keen to get another job. He will view this role as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic could possibly make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest shocking development was the harsh way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," stated he.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in business being done with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, this was another illustration of how unusual situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to take all the important decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in team annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with confidential messages to media organisations, but no statement is heard in the open.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And it's just what he went against when going full thermonuclear on the manager on that day.

The official line from the club is that he resigned, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, carefully, one must question why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

If the manager is culpable of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

He has accused him of distorting things in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He says Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

Such an remarkable charge, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

His Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

Looking back to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised Desmond at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who drew the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have put it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's operational approach, though.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it transpired once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow way Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he called "agility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent record amounts of money in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the £9m Adam Idah and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have cut it to date, with one since having departed - the manager pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.

He planted a bomb about a internal disunity inside the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his next media briefing he would typically minimize it and almost reverse what he said.

Internal issues? Not at all, all are united, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a risky strategy.

A few months back there was a report in a publication that allegedly came from a insider close to the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his exit, this was the implication of the story.

Supporters were enraged. They now viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his shield because his board members wouldn't back his vision to achieve success.

This disclosure was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the support of the individuals above him.

The regular {gripes