🔗 Share this article

Merely a quarter of an hour after the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief short statement, the howitzer arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent anger.

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

This individual he persuaded to join the club when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and required being in their place. And the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous series of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Based on comments he has said lately, he has been keen to get a new position. He'll view this role as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Would he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the harsh manner Desmond described the former manager.

It was a forceful endeavor at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For somebody who prizes propriety and sets high importance in dealings being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was a further example of how unusual things have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the important decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He never attend club AGMs, sending his son, Ross, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to support the organization with confidential messages to media organisations, but nothing is heard in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And it's exactly what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on the manager on that day.

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

If Rodgers is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the manager not dismissed?

He has accused him of distorting information in public that were inconsistent with reality.

He says Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the team and fuelled animosity towards members of the executive team and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

To return to happier days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Rodgers respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who drew the heat when his comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had his support. Over time, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters turned into a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow way Celtic went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was concerned.

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

Despite the organization splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with one already having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

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

A few months back there was a report in a publication that allegedly originated from a source associated with the organization. It claimed that the manager was harming 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, that was the tone of the story.

Supporters were enraged. They now saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his plans to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was intended to harm him, which it accomplished. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. If there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

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

The regular {gripes