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Merely fifteen minutes following the club released the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief five-paragraph statement, the howitzer arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

In 551-words, major shareholder Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

The man he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting in their place. Plus the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was given over to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Considering comments he has said lately, he has been eager to secure a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he experienced such success and praise.

Would he give it up easily? It seems unlikely. The club could possibly reach out to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful attempt at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, here was another illustration of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, operates in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does interviews about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with confidential missives to news outlets, but no statement is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's exactly what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

The official line from the team is that he stepped down, but reading Desmond's criticism, carefully, one must question why did he allow it to reach this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the things that Desmond is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the manager not removed?

He has charged him of distorting things in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

He says Rodgers' words "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Model Once More'

Looking back to better days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

This was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the persuasion, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the fans turned into a love-in again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when his ambition came in contact with the club's business model, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish process the team went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he stated about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Despite the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have performed well to date, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his next media briefing he would usually downplay it and almost reverse what he stated.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that allegedly came from a insider associated with the club. It claimed that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

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

Supporters were enraged. They then saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his board members wouldn't support his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to hurt Rodgers, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear Rodgers was losing the support of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes