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Just fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the announcement of their manager's surprising departure via a perfunctory short communication, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent anger.

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

The man he convinced to join the team when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and required being in their place. And the figure he once more turned to after the previous manager departed to another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the severity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his departure from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an unending series of appearances and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Based on comments he has expressed lately, he has been eager to get another job. He will see this one as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the place where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal manner Desmond described the former manager.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote he.

For a person who values propriety and places great store in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not outright privacy, this was another example of how abnormal things have grown at the club.

Desmond, the club's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to make all the major decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He never attend team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And that's exactly what he went against when going full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

The official line from the team is that Rodgers stepped down, but reviewing Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why did he permit it to get such a critical point?

If Rodgers is culpable of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why had been the coach not removed?

Desmond has charged him of spinning information in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He claims his statements "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be preparing as we speak.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers lauded Desmond at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, really, to nobody else.

It was the figure who drew the heat when Rodgers' returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the prodigal son for a few or, as other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had his support. Gradually, the manager employed the persuasion, delivered the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when his goals came in contact with the club's business model, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it to date, with one already having departed - Rodgers demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He planted a controversy about a internal disunity inside the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically downplay it and nearly contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was playing a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that allegedly came from a source associated with the organization. It said that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be present and he was engineering his exit, that was the tone of the story.

The fans were enraged. They then saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't support his vision to achieve success.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to hurt him, which it accomplished. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was clear the manager was losing the support of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes