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Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a brief five-paragraph statement, the bombshell landed, from the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

In 551-words, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

This individual he convinced to join the team when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the man he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

Such was the ferocity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous circuit of appearances and the performance of all his past successes at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a while. Based on comments he has said lately, he has been keen to secure a new position. He'll view this one as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Would he give it up readily? It seems unlikely. The club could possibly reach out to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the biggest shocking moment was the brutal manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded endeavor at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote he.

For somebody who prizes decorum and places great store in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another example of how unusual situations have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He never attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the club with private messages to media organisations, but no statement is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to be. And it's exactly what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he stepped down, but reading his invective, carefully, one must question why he permit it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the coach not removed?

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

He says his words "played a part to a toxic environment around the club and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with the Club's Strategy Again

Looking back to better days, they were tight, the two men. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Rodgers respected Dermot and, really, to no one other.

This was the figure who drew the criticism when Rodgers' comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had his back. Over time, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals clashed with the club's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. He spoke openly about the sluggish process the team conducted their transfer business, the interminable delay for targets to be landed, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the club spent record amounts of money in a calendar year on the expensive one signing, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it so far, with one already having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, often, he did it in public.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like he was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that allegedly came from a insider close to the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his departure plan.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his way out, that was the implication of the story.

Supporters were angered. They then saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his board members did not support his plans to achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to hurt Rodgers, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was losing the backing of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes