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Just a quarter of an hour after Celtic released the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the howitzer arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious fury.

Through an extensive statement, major shareholder Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

This individual he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were getting uppity in 2016 and required being in their place. Plus the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of his critique, the astonishing return of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after a large part of his recent life was given over to an continuous circuit of appearances and the performance of all his past successes at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Based on things he has expressed recently, he has been keen to secure a new position. He'll view this one as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he experienced such success and praise.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly make a call to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

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

It was a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the expense of others," stated he.

For a person who values decorum and places great store in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, this was another example of how abnormal situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to make all the major decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to defend the club with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reviewing his criticism, carefully, one must question why he permit it to get this far down the line?

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

Desmond has charged him of spinning information in public that were inconsistent with the facts.

He says Rodgers' statements "played a part to a hostile environment around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. Some of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."

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

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised Desmond at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who took the criticism when his comeback occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial hiring, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' back. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, delivered the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

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

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process Celtic conducted their transfer business, the interminable waiting for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the necessity for what he termed "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with one since having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, often, he did it in public.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the club and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his subsequent media briefing he would typically downplay it and almost reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a risky game.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a insider associated with the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his way out, that was the implication of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't support his vision to bring success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was intended to harm him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

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

The frequent {gripes