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Merely a quarter of an hour after Celtic issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a brief five-paragraph communication, the howitzer arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

The man he persuaded to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being in their place. Plus the figure he once more turned to after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Based on comments he has expressed lately, he has been eager to get a new position. He'll view this one as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such success and praise.

Would he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. The club could possibly make a call to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a soothing presence for the time being.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal way the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," stated he.

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

The major figure, the organization's dominant presence, operates in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with private messages to media organisations, but nothing is made in the open.

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 that day.

The official line from the team is that he resigned, but reviewing Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why did he allow it to get such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is guilty of all of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning information in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He claims Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

What an extraordinary allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

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

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

This was the figure who took the criticism when his returned happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy peace with the fans became a love-in once more.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when his ambition clashed with the club's operational approach, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened again, with bells on, over the last year. He spoke openly about the slow way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he spoke about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the £9m Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one since having left - the manager pushed for more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically downplay it and almost contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd claim. It looked like he was playing a risky strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source associated with the club. It said that the manager was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was arranging his way out, that was the tone of the article.

Supporters were angered. They now viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors did not back his vision to achieve triumph.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was shedding the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes