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Merely a quarter of an hour following the club released the news of their manager's shock resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

Through 551-words, major shareholder Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

This individual he persuaded to come to the team when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the man he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the recent offseason.

So intense was the ferocity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically 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 appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Considering comments he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He'll see this one as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Would he give it up easily? It seems unlikely. The club might well reach out to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a soothing presence for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the harsh way the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, 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 values decorum and sets high importance in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another illustration of how abnormal things have become at the club.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the authority to make all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in club annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential messages to media organisations, but nothing is made in the open.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And that's exactly what he went against when going all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

If Rodgers is culpable of every one of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to ask why had been the manager not removed?

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

He says Rodgers' statements "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

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

Looking back to better times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers respected him and, truly, to no one other.

It was the figure who took the criticism when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the wins and the honors, and an fragile peace with the supporters became a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for targets 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 called "agility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, often, he did it in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and nearly reverse what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was playing a risky game.

A few months back there was a report in a publication that purportedly originated from a insider close to the organization. It said that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his board members wouldn't back his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we heard no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was losing the support of the people above him.

The regular {gripes