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Just fifteen minutes following the club issued the news of their manager's shock resignation via a perfunctory short communication, the howitzer arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

Through an extensive statement, major shareholder Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

The man he convinced to come to the team when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and needed putting back in a box. Plus the figure he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Considering things he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure a new position. He will see this one as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he experienced such success and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the moment.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a labeling of him as untrustful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who values decorum and places great store in business being done with discretion, if not complete privacy, this was a further example of how abnormal situations have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to make all the major decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He does not attend team AGMs, sending his son, Ross, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're glowing in nature. 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 news outlets, but no statement is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to remain. And that's exactly what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on that day.

The official line from the club is that he resigned, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why he permit it to get such a critical point?

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the coach not dismissed?

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

He says Rodgers' words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. Some of the abuse aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, indeed. Lawyers might be mobilising as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Strategy Again

To return to happier days, they were tight, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the heat when his comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had his back. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a love-in once more.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with bells on, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish way the team conducted their player acquisitions, the endless delay for targets to be secured, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one since having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source close to the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his way out, this was the tone of the article.

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 back his vision to bring success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to harm him, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we heard no more about it.

By then it was clear the manager was losing the support of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes