🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph statement, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

The man he persuaded to come to the team when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and needed putting back in a box. And the man he once more relied on after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous circuit of appearances and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been eager to get a new position. He'll view this one as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the place where he experienced such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a soothing presence for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' development was the brutal manner Desmond described Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who prizes decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another illustration of how unusual things have grown at the club.

The major figure, the club's dominant presence, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to support the club with confidential messages to media organisations, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And it's exactly what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reading Desmond's invective, line by line, you have to wonder why did he allow it to reach this far down the line?

Assuming the manager is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why had been the manager not dismissed?

He has accused him of distorting information in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

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

What an remarkable charge, indeed. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with the Club's Strategy Once More'

To return to better days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the heat when his comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had his support. Over time, Rodgers employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the supporters became a love-in once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when his ambition came in contact with Celtic's operational approach, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened again, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish process the team conducted their player acquisitions, the endless delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he termed "agility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club splurged record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the costly another player and the £6m further acquisition - none of whom have cut it so far, with Idah since having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, often, he did it in openly.

He planted a controversy about a internal disunity within the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.

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

A few months back there was a story in a publication that purportedly originated from a source close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

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

Supporters were enraged. They now saw him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his board members did not back his vision to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes