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Merely a quarter of an hour after the club issued the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent anger.

In an extensive statement, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

The man he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and required being in their place. And the man he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of Martin O'Neill was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after a large part of his recent life was dedicated to an continuous circuit of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a while. Based on comments he has said recently, he has been eager to secure a new position. He'll view this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Will he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the harsh way the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

It was a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of others," stated Desmond.

For somebody who values decorum and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not complete privacy, here was a further example of how abnormal things have become at the club.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the important calls he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in team annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're glowing in tone. And still, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with private missives to media organisations, but nothing is heard in public.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And it's exactly what he contradicted when going all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reviewing his criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why did he allow it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is guilty of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the manager not removed?

He has accused him of spinning information in public that did not tally with reality.

He says Rodgers' words "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with the Club's Model Again

Looking back to happier times, they were close, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who drew the heat when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' back. Gradually, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans turned into a love-in once more.

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

This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process Celtic went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Despite the club splurged unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having left - Rodgers demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and almost reverse what he stated.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like he 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 the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his exit, this was the implication of the article.

Supporters were angered. They then viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his honor because his board members wouldn't support his vision to bring success.

The leak was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we heard no more about it.

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

The frequent {gripes