🔗 Share this article

Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a brief short statement, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

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

The man he convinced to come to the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and needed putting back in a box. Plus the figure he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his takedown, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Based on things he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been eager to secure a new position. He will view this one as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

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

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest shocking development was the brutal way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of untruths, a spreader of falsehoods; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-interest at the expense of others," stated Desmond.

For somebody who values propriety and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, here was a further example of how unusual situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the club's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in team AGMs, sending his son, Ross, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the organization with private missives to media organisations, but nothing is made in public.

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

The official line from the team is that Rodgers stepped down, but reviewing his invective, carefully, you have to wonder why he allow it to get such a critical point?

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

He has accused him of spinning things in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He claims his words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged animosity towards members of the executive team and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Ambition Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Again

To return to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who drew the criticism when his returned occurred, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most divisive appointment, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had his back. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the charm, delivered the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's operational approach, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process the team conducted their player acquisitions, the endless delay for prospects to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club spent record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with one since having departed - Rodgers demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that allegedly originated from a insider close to the club. It said that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was arranging his exit, this was the tone of the article.

Supporters were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his board members wouldn't back his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes