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Just a quarter of an hour following the club released the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a perfunctory short communication, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

In 551-words, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to join the club when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting in their place. And the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his departure from the club, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous circuit 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 while. Based on comments he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been eager to secure a new position. He'll view this role as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he experienced such success and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's return - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

It was a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For a person who values decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the authority to make all the important calls he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not attend team annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances 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 that's exactly what he went against when going all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reading his invective, line by line, one must question why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why had been the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning things in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

He claims his words "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the club and fuelled animosity towards members of the management and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

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

His Aspirations Clashed with the Club's Model Once More'

To return to happier times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, really, to no one other.

This was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a affectionate relationship once more.

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

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened once more, with bells on, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish process Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it so far, with Idah since having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he did it in openly.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and almost reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd say. It appeared like he was engaging in a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source associated with the organization. It said that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his departure plan.

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

Supporters were enraged. They now viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure 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 Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was losing the backing of the people above him.

The regular {gripes