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Merely a quarter of an hour following the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a brief short communication, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with clear signs in obvious fury.

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

The man he persuaded to join the team when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the figure he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was given over to an unending series of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a while. Considering comments he has expressed recently, he has been eager to get another job. He'll view this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he experienced such glory and adulation.

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

All-out Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' moment was the harsh way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a forceful attempt at character assassination, a labeling of him as untrustful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who prizes propriety and sets high importance in business being done with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, here was another example of how abnormal things have become at the club.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to take all the major calls he pleases without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.

He never participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with private missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's exactly what he contradicted when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

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

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it's fair to ask why had been the manager not removed?

He has charged him of spinning information in public that were inconsistent with the facts.

He says his words "played a part to a toxic environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the management and the directors. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

To return to better times, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Rodgers respected Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

This was the figure who drew the heat when Rodgers' comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have put it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had his support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an fragile peace with the fans became a love-in once more.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' goals clashed with the club's business model, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow way Celtic went about their transfer business, the interminable delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he termed "agility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the club splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with Idah already having left - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would usually minimize it and almost reverse what he stated.

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

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

The fans were enraged. They now viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to harm him, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

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

The frequent {gripes