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Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the howitzer landed, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious fury.

Through 551-words, key investor Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he convinced to join the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. And the man he again relied on after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

Such was the severity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an continuous series of appearances and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Considering things he has said lately, he has been keen to get another job. He'll see this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who prizes propriety and places great store in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, here was another example of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the authority to make all the important decisions he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He does not participate in team annual meetings, sending his offspring, Ross, instead. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with private messages to news outlets, but no statement is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And that's exactly what he went against when going all-out attack on Rodgers on that day.

The directive from the team is that he resigned, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, you have to wonder why did he permit it to get such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why was the coach not removed?

Desmond has charged him of spinning information in public that did not tally with reality.

He says his words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an remarkable allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Once More'

To return to happier times, they were close, the two men. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, Rodgers turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans became a affectionate relationship again.

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

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process the team went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the club spent record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity within the club and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and almost contradict what he stated.

Internal issues? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It looked like Rodgers was playing a risky strategy.

A few months back there was a report in a publication that purportedly originated from a insider close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They then viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't support his plans to bring triumph.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

By then it was plain the manager was losing the support of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes