🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief short statement, the bombshell arrived, from the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

The man he convinced to join the club when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. And the man he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his latter years was given over to an unending circuit of appearances 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 things he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been eager to get a new position. He'll see this one as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's return - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' development was the harsh manner the shareholder described the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the cost of others," wrote he.

For a person who values decorum and sets high importance in business being done with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, this was a further illustration of how unusual things have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He never participate in team AGMs, sending his offspring, Ross, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

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

The official line from the club is that he resigned, but reviewing his criticism, carefully, one must question why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

If the manager is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why was the manager not removed?

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

He says Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. Some of the abuse aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be preparing as we speak.

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, the two men. The manager praised Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

It was Desmond who drew the criticism when his returned happened, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial hiring, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager employed the charm, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the supporters became a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with Celtic's operational approach, however.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened again, with bells on, over the last year. He spoke openly about the slow way the team conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the organization spent record amounts of funds in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well to date, with one already having departed - the manager demanded increased resources and, often, he expressed this in public.

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

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that allegedly came from a source close to the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be present and he was arranging his way out, that was the implication of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They now saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his directors did not back his vision to achieve success.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the support of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes