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Just fifteen minutes following the club issued the announcement of their manager's shock resignation via a perfunctory short statement, the howitzer arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

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

The man he persuaded to join the team when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and required being in their place. Plus the figure he again turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

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

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after a large part of his recent life was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Considering comments he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been keen to secure a new position. He'll view this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he experienced such glory and praise.

Would he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly make a call to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the time being.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's return - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant shocking moment was the brutal way the shareholder described the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the cost of others," wrote he.

For somebody who prizes propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, this was a further illustration of how unusual situations have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's dominant figure, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He never attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, Ross, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with private messages to media organisations, but nothing is heard in the open.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And that's exactly what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the club is that he stepped down, but reviewing his criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why did he permit it to get such a critical point?

If Rodgers is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why was the manager not removed?

Desmond has charged him of spinning things in public that did not tally with reality.

He claims his words "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the club and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

Looking back to better days, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, really, to no one other.

It was Desmond who drew the heat when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' ambition clashed with the club's operational approach, though.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it transpired once more, with bells on, recently. He publicly commented about the sluggish process the team conducted their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he termed "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with Idah already having left - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, often, he did it in public.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and nearly reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It looked like Rodgers was playing a risky game.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a insider close to the club. It said that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

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

The fans were enraged. They then viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his directors did not back his vision to bring success.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes