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Just fifteen minutes following the club issued the news of their manager's surprising departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph statement, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to join the team when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the man he again relied on after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the ferocity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a time. Based on things he has said recently, he has been keen to get a new position. He will see this one as the ultimate chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well reach out to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the cost of others," stated he.

For somebody who prizes decorum and places great store in business being conducted with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was another example of how unusual things have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to take all the important calls he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not attend team annual meetings, sending his son, Ross, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with private messages to media organisations, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And that's exactly what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

The official line from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reviewing Desmond's invective, carefully, you have to wonder why he allow it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not removed?

He has accused him of spinning things in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He claims Rodgers' words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the team and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Once More'

Looking back to better days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers respected Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had his back. Over time, the manager employed the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with the club's business model, however.

It happened in his first incarnation and it transpired once more, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process the team went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for prospects to be secured, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the club splurged unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

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

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his departure plan.

He didn't want to be present and he was arranging his exit, this was the implication of the story.

Supporters were angered. They now saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members did not back his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to harm him, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

By then it was clear Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes