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Merely a quarter of an hour after the club released the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

Through an extensive statement, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

The man he persuaded to join the team when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and needed putting back in a box. Plus the man he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after a large part of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a while. Based on things he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure 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 adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well reach out to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant shocking development was the harsh way the shareholder described the former manager.

It was a forceful endeavor at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," wrote he.

For somebody who values propriety and places great store in business being conducted with discretion, if not complete secrecy, here was another illustration of how abnormal situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to make all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He never attend team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but no statement is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And that's just what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, carefully, one must question why he allow it to get this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is culpable of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why had been the manager not dismissed?

He has charged him of distorting information in public that were inconsistent with reality.

He says his statements "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unwarranted and improper."

What an remarkable allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be preparing as we speak.

His Ambition Clashed with Celtic's Model Once More'

To return to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers respected Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

This was the figure who took the criticism when his returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive hiring, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had his support. Over time, Rodgers turned on the charm, delivered the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans became a love-in again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when his ambition came in contact with Celtic's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the slow process the team conducted their player acquisitions, the endless delay for prospects to be secured, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the need for what he called "agility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of funds in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the £6m further acquisition - none of whom have performed well so far, with Idah already having departed - the manager demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a controversy about a internal disunity within the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like he was playing a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that allegedly came from a source associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was arranging his exit, that was the implication of the article.

The fans were enraged. They then viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure 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 meant to harm Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was losing the backing of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes