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Just fifteen minutes following Celtic released the announcement of their manager's shock resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

In an extensive statement, major shareholder Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

This individual he persuaded to come to the team when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the figure he once more turned to after the previous manager departed to another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was given over to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Considering things he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He'll view this one as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well reach out to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a labeling of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For somebody who prizes propriety and sets high importance in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, this was a further illustration of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's dominant figure, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the authority to take all the major calls he pleases without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in team AGMs, sending his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're glowing in tone. And still, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the club with private messages to news outlets, but nothing is made in the open.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's just what he went against when launching all-out attack on the manager on that day.

The directive from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reviewing his criticism, carefully, one must question why he permit it to get this far down the line?

If Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the coach not removed?

Desmond has charged him of distorting information in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He claims Rodgers' words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the directors. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable allegation, indeed. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

His Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

To return to happier times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the heat when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - always - 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 transpired again, with bells on, recently. He publicly commented about the sluggish process the team went about their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for targets to be landed, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.

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

Despite the organization splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with one since having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then walked away. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he said.

Internal issues? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that allegedly came from a source close to the club. It said that the manager was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not to be there and he was arranging his way out, this was the implication of the article.

The fans were enraged. They now saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't support his plans to achieve triumph.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

By then it was clear the manager was losing the backing of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes