🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes following the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent anger.

In 551-words, key investor Dermot Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. Plus the figure he once more relied on after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the ferocity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his recent life was given over to an continuous series of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Based on comments he has said lately, O'Neill has been keen to get another job. He'll see this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

It was a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the cost of others," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who prizes propriety and places great store in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, moves in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to make all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He never attend club annual meetings, dispatching his son, Ross, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in the open.

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

The directive from the team is that he resigned, but reading his invective, carefully, one must question why did he allow it to reach such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not removed?

Desmond has charged him of distorting things in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He claims his words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

To return to better days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for a few or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.

The shareholder had his back. Over time, Rodgers turned on the charm, delivered the wins and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the fans became a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the slow process Celtic went about their transfer business, the endless delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the need for what he termed "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Despite the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive one signing, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it to date, with one already having departed - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the team and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his subsequent media briefing he would usually downplay it and almost contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like Rodgers was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a insider associated with the organization. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be there and he was arranging his exit, that was the tone of the story.

Supporters were enraged. They then saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't support his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

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

The frequent {gripes