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Just fifteen minutes after Celtic released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

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

This individual he persuaded to come to the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was given over to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Considering comments he has expressed lately, he has been eager to get another job. He'll see this role as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and praise.

Would he give it up easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the most significant shocking development was the harsh way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who values decorum and places great store in dealings being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was a further example of how abnormal situations have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's most powerful presence, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the important calls he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the club with private missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's just what he went against when going full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he stepped down, but reading his criticism, carefully, one must question why he allow it to reach such a critical point?

If Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the manager not removed?

Desmond has charged him of distorting things in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims his words "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the club and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the board. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an extraordinary allegation, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

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

To return to happier times, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Rodgers respected him and, truly, to no one other.

This was Desmond who took the heat when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' back. Gradually, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters turned into a love-in once more.

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

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the slow way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he stated about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Despite the club splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one already having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.

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

A few months back there was a story in a publication that allegedly originated from a insider close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

He didn't want to be present and he was engineering his way out, that was the tone of the story.

The fans were angered. They then viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his board members did not support his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to hurt him, which it accomplished. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination 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