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Just a quarter of an hour following the club released the announcement of their manager's surprising departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph statement, the bombshell landed, courtesy of the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in obvious anger.

In 551-words, key investor Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

The man he convinced to join the team when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being back in a box. Plus the figure he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the recent offseason.

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

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

For now - and maybe for a time. Considering comments he has expressed lately, he has been keen to get a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the place where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to sound out their ex-manager, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the harsh manner Desmond described Rodgers.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For somebody who prizes decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with discretion, if not outright privacy, this was another illustration of how unusual things have become at the club.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, moves in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

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

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is heard in the open.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And it's just what he went against when going all-out attack on Rodgers on that day.

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

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why had been the manager not dismissed?

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

He claims Rodgers' statements "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the club and encouraged animosity towards members of the executive team and the directors. Some of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

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

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with the Club's Model Once More'

Looking back to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to no one other.

This was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when his goals came in contact with Celtic's business model, however.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it transpired again, with added intensity, recently. He publicly commented about the sluggish process Celtic went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he termed "agility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it so far, with Idah already having left - the manager pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It looked like he was engaging in a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source close to the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

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

Supporters were angered. They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn't back his plans to achieve triumph.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to harm him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain the manager was losing the backing of the individuals above him.

The regular {gripes