🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes following the club released the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief short statement, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

This individual he persuaded to come to the team when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. Plus the man he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the severity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after much of his latter years was given over to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a while. Based on things he has said lately, he has been keen to get a new position. He will view this role as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

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

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

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

It was a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the cost of others," stated he.

For a person who values propriety and places great store in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another example of how abnormal things have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential messages to media organisations, but nothing is heard in public.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's exactly what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the club 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?

If the manager is guilty of all of the things that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the coach not removed?

Desmond has charged him of distorting information in public that did not tally with reality.

He says his words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

What an remarkable allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Again

Looking back to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was the figure who drew the criticism when his returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' back. Over time, Rodgers employed the persuasion, delivered the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a love-in once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when Rodgers' goals clashed with Celtic's operational approach, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. He spoke openly about the slow process Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for prospects to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he called "agility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the club splurged record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having left - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity inside the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like he was engaging in a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that allegedly originated from a source close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were enraged. They then viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his board members wouldn't back his plans to bring success.

This disclosure was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes