🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes following the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a brief five-paragraph statement, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with clear signs in obvious fury.

In 551-words, key investor Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

The man he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being back in a box. And the man he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his takedown, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Considering things he has expressed recently, he has been keen to get another job. He'll see this one as the perfect opportunity, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Would he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' development was the harsh way the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who prizes propriety and places great store in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, here was another illustration of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's dominant figure, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the power to make all the major decisions he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He never attend team AGMs, sending his son, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to support the club with private missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And that's exactly what he went against when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The directive from the team is that Rodgers stepped down, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why he allow it to get this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the coach not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting things in public that were inconsistent with the facts.

He claims Rodgers' statements "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an remarkable allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

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

Looking back to better days, they were tight, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers respected Dermot and, really, to no one other.

It was the figure who took the heat when his returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had his support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' ambition came in contact with the club's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with bells on, over the last year. He spoke openly about the slow process the team conducted their transfer business, the endless waiting for targets to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have cut it so far, with Idah since having left - Rodgers demanded more and more and, often, he did it in openly.

He planted a bomb about a internal disunity inside the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly came from a insider close to the organization. It said that the manager was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

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

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his board members did not back his plans to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was intended to hurt him, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

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

The regular {gripes