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Merely a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of their manager's shock resignation via a brief short communication, the bombshell landed, from the major shareholder, with clear signs in obvious fury.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to come to the team when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the man he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's critique, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of appearances and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a while. Considering things he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He'll see this one as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Would he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the cost of others," wrote Desmond.

For a person who prizes decorum and places great store in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another example of how unusual things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to take all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend team annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're glowing in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with private messages to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's exactly what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the team is that he resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, line by line, one must question why he permit it to get such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting things in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

He claims Rodgers' statements "played a part to a hostile environment around the club and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable."

What an remarkable charge, that is. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

Looking back to happier times, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

This was the figure who drew the heat when Rodgers' returned happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' back. Over time, the manager employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the fans turned into a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened again, with bells on, over the last year. He spoke openly about the slow way the team conducted their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be secured, then missed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he stated about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the market. Supporters agreed with him.

Despite the organization splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well so far, with Idah since having left - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity within the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent media briefing he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that allegedly originated from a source associated with the organization. It said that the manager was damaging Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his departure plan.

He desired not to be present and he was engineering his way out, that was the implication of the article.

The fans were enraged. They now saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't back his vision to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain the manager was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes