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Just a quarter of an hour following Celtic issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

Through an extensive statement, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

The man he convinced to join the team when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the figure he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the astonishing return of Martin O'Neill was almost 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 public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering things he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been eager to get a new position. He'll see this one as the ultimate chance, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to sound out their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the biggest shocking development was the harsh manner Desmond described Rodgers.

This constituted a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the cost of others," stated Desmond.

For a person who values propriety and places great store in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another illustration of how unusual situations have grown at the club.

Desmond, the club's most powerful figure, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to take all the important decisions he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He never participate in team AGMs, dispatching his son, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And even then, 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.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's just what he went against when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he resigned, but reviewing Desmond's invective, line by line, one must question why he allow it to reach such a critical point?

If the manager is guilty of every one of the accusations that Desmond is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the coach not dismissed?

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

He says his statements "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the board. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

To return to better times, they were close, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Rodgers respected him and, truly, to no one other.

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

This marked the most divisive hiring, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as other Celtic fans would have put it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had his back. Gradually, the manager employed the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when Rodgers' goals clashed with the club's operational approach, however.

It happened in his first incarnation and it transpired once more, with bells on, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for prospects to be secured, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he stated about the need for what he termed "agility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having departed - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a dangerous strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a publication that allegedly originated from a source associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

The fans were angered. They then saw him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his plans to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was shedding the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes