🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes following the club released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a brief short statement, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent fury.

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

This individual he convinced to come to the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the figure he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was given over to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Considering things he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He'll view this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he experienced such success and adulation.

Would he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly make a call to sound out Postecoglou, 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 is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal manner the shareholder described the former manager.

It was a full-blooded endeavor at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the cost of others," wrote he.

For somebody who values decorum and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, here was another illustration of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, moves in the background. The absentee totem, 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 never participate in club annual meetings, sending his son, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to support the club with private messages to media organisations, but no statement is heard in the open.

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

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

If the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

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

He claims Rodgers' words "played a part to a toxic environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

Such an remarkable charge, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

His Ambition Clashed with the Club's Model Again

To return to better days, they were close, the two men. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Rodgers respected Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

This was the figure who drew the criticism when his comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had his support. Gradually, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans became a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with the club's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, recently. He publicly commented about the slow way Celtic conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he spoke about the necessity for what he termed "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have performed well to date, with one since having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was playing a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that purportedly came from a insider close to the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They then viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn't back his plans to bring success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to harm him, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the support of the individuals above him.

The regular {gripes