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Merely fifteen minutes after the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the howitzer landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious anger.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

This individual he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. And the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a while. Based on comments he has expressed recently, he has been eager to get a new position. He will see this one as the perfect opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the place where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he give it up 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.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it is - can be parked because the most significant shocking development was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the expense of others," stated Desmond.

For a person who prizes decorum and places great store in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not complete privacy, here was a further example of how unusual things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He never participate in team AGMs, dispatching his son, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to support the club with confidential messages to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

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

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

Assuming Rodgers is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the coach not removed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting things in public that did not tally with the facts.

He says his words "played a part to a hostile environment around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

Such an remarkable charge, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who drew the heat when Rodgers' returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had his back. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the supporters became a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with the club's operational approach, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with bells on, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic went about their transfer business, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization spent record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the costly another player and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have performed well so far, with one since having departed - the manager pushed for more and more and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his next media briefing he would typically downplay it and almost contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, all are united, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source associated with the organization. It claimed that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was engineering his exit, that was the tone of the story.

Supporters were enraged. They then saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his directors wouldn't back his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes