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Just fifteen minutes after the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a brief five-paragraph statement, the howitzer landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

In an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

The man he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being in their place. And the figure he once more turned to after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his recent life was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has expressed recently, he has been keen to get a new position. He will view this one as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal way the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who values decorum and places great store in business being conducted with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was a further example of how abnormal things have grown at the club.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to make all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the organization with private messages to news outlets, but nothing is made in the open.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's just what he contradicted when going all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the club is that he stepped down, but reviewing his invective, line by line, one must question why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

Assuming the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why had been the manager not dismissed?

He has charged him of distorting information in public that did not tally with the facts.

He says Rodgers' statements "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

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

His Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Once More'

Looking back to better times, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Rodgers deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

This was the figure who drew the heat when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

It was the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the charm, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's operational approach, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, recently. He spoke openly about the slow way the team conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have cut it so far, with Idah since having departed - the manager demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He planted a controversy about a internal disunity inside the club and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his next media briefing he would typically downplay it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Internal issues? Not at all, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly came from a insider close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his open criticisms 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 tone of the article.

The fans were enraged. They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't back his plans to bring success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to harm him, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we heard no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was shedding the backing of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes