🔗 Share this article

Just a quarter of an hour after Celtic issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a brief short communication, the howitzer arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Desmond savaged his old chum.

The man he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. Plus the man he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Based on things he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been eager to secure a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly reach out to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's return - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant shocking development was the brutal way the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For somebody who prizes propriety and places great store in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not complete privacy, here was a further example of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He does not participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an occasion or two to support the organization with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to remain. And it's just what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

The directive from the team is that Rodgers stepped down, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, you have to wonder why did he allow it to get such a critical point?

If the manager is guilty of every one of the things that Desmond is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why was the manager not dismissed?

He has charged him of spinning information in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He says his words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

What an extraordinary allegation, indeed. Lawyers might be mobilising as we discuss.

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

To return to happier days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

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

It was the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had his back. Over time, Rodgers turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when his goals came in contact with Celtic's operational approach, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow way the team went about their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the market. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it so far, with one since having left - the manager demanded increased resources and, often, he did it in public.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then walked away. Upon questioning about his comments at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like he was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly came from a source associated with the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be present and he was engineering his exit, that was the tone of the story.

Supporters were enraged. They then viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his honor because his board members did not support his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to harm him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear Rodgers was shedding the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes