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Just fifteen minutes following Celtic released the announcement of their manager's shock departure via a brief five-paragraph communication, the howitzer arrived, from the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

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

The man he persuaded to come to the club when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. And the figure he once more turned to after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

Such was the severity of his takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a time. Based on comments he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been eager to get a new position. He will see this role as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Would he give it up readily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well make a call to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the time being.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal way the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not complete privacy, this was another illustration of how unusual things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the club'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 obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in team annual meetings, sending his offspring, Ross, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with confidential missives to media organisations, but nothing is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's just what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on the manager on that day.

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

Assuming Rodgers is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the coach not removed?

He has charged him of spinning information in public that did not tally with the facts.

He claims Rodgers' statements "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the directors. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be preparing as we speak.

His Ambition Conflicted with Celtic's Model Once More'

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, really, to no one other.

It was Desmond who took the heat when his returned occurred, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, delivered the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the fans became a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when his goals clashed with Celtic's operational approach, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish process the team conducted their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with one already having left - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Internal issues? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a risky strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a insider associated with the club. It said that the manager was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his exit strategy.

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

The fans were enraged. They then saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his directors did not support his plans to bring success.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to harm him, which it accomplished. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

By then it was clear Rodgers was losing the backing of the people above him.

The regular {gripes