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Just a quarter of an hour after the club released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a brief short communication, the howitzer landed, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent fury.

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

The man he convinced to join the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and required being back in a box. Plus the man he once more turned to after the previous manager left for another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's critique, the astonishing comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his departure from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Considering things he has said recently, he has been eager to secure another job. He'll see this one as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Would he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to sound out their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the harsh way the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who prizes decorum and places great store in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal things have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's dominant figure, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend team annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to defend the club with confidential missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to be. And that's exactly what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the team is that Rodgers stepped down, but reviewing Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why did he permit it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is culpable of every one of the things that Desmond is alleging he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the coach not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning things in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He says his statements "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and improper."

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

His Ambition Clashed with the Club's Strategy Once More'

Looking back to happier times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan respected Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' back. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, delivered the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans became a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals clashed with the club's business model, however.

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened again, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the sluggish way the team went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having left - the manager pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

A few months back there was a report in a publication that purportedly came from a insider close to the club. It said that the manager was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were enraged. They then viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his shield because his board members did not support his plans to achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes