🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes after Celtic released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with clear signs in obvious anger.

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

The man he persuaded to join the team when Rangers were gaining ground 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 severity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was given over to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Considering comments he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic could possibly make a call to sound out their ex-manager, but O'Neill will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant shocking development was the harsh way the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful attempt at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For somebody who prizes decorum and places great store in business being done with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, this was another illustration of how abnormal situations have grown at the club.

The major figure, the organization's dominant presence, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to take all the important calls he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not attend club AGMs, sending his son, Ross, in his place. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to support the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is heard in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And that's exactly what he went against when going full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The official line from the club is that Rodgers stepped down, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, line by line, one must question why he allow it to get such a critical point?

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not removed?

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

He says his words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the club and encouraged animosity towards members of the management and the board. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

His Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, the two men. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

It was the figure who took the heat when his comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had his back. Over time, the manager employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans became a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with the club's operational approach, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish process the team went about their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and almost reverse what he said.

Internal issues? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was playing a risky strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source close to the organization. It claimed that the manager was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his exit, that was the tone of the story.

The fans were angered. They now saw him as similar to a martyr who might be removed on his shield because his directors did not support his plans to achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was intended to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain the manager was shedding the support of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes