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Merely a quarter of an hour after the club released the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a brief short communication, the bombshell arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

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

The man he persuaded to come to the club when Rangers were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting back in a box. And the man he once more turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a time. Considering things he has said recently, he has been keen to get another job. He will view this role as the perfect chance, a present from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to sound out their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the moment.

All-out Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant shocking development was the harsh way Desmond wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the cost of others," stated Desmond.

For a person who values decorum and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was another example of how unusual things have grown at the club.

Desmond, the club's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the authority to make all the important decisions he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He never participate in team AGMs, sending his son, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives interviews about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the organization with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is heard in the open.

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

The official line from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, carefully, one must question why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

If the manager is culpable of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why was the manager not dismissed?

He has charged him of spinning things in public that did not tally with the facts.

He says his words "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

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

Looking back to happier days, they were close, the two men. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most divisive hiring, the return of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other supporters would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' back. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, delivered the victories and the honors, and an fragile peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

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

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, recently. He publicly commented about the slow way the team conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

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

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the £6m further acquisition - none of whom have cut it so far, with Idah since having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, often, he did it in public.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his comments at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and almost contradict what he stated.

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

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source close to the organization. It claimed that the manager was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be present and he was arranging his way out, that was the implication of the article.

The fans were angered. They now saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his directors did not back his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to hurt him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes