🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes after Celtic issued the news of their manager's shock resignation via a brief short communication, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent anger.

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

This individual he persuaded to join the team when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being in their place. And the figure he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was almost an secondary note.

Two decades 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 performance of all his past successes at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a time. Considering comments he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to get another job. He will see this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Would he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. The club might well reach out to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' moment was the brutal way the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For somebody who prizes propriety and places great store in business being done with discretion, if not complete privacy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to take all the important decisions he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not attend team annual meetings, sending his offspring, Ross, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with confidential missives to media organisations, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's exactly what he went against when launching all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

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

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

He has accused him of distorting information in public that did not tally with the facts.

He says Rodgers' statements "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the directors. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

What an remarkable charge, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Strategy Again

To return to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to no one other.

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

It was the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' back. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the persuasion, delivered the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with the club's business model, though.

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

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have cut it to date, with one already having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the team and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next media briefing he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he said.

Internal issues? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that allegedly came from a source associated with the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his exit, this was the implication of the story.

The fans were angered. They then viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his vision to achieve triumph.

The leak was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it did. 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 plain Rodgers was losing the backing of the individuals above him.

The regular {gripes