🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes after the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of 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 club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an unending series 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.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Based on comments he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He will view this one as the ultimate chance, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he experienced such success and praise.

Would he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the harsh manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded endeavor at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as untrustful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," stated he.

For somebody who values decorum and places great store in business being done with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal things have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to make all the major decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He does not participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the club with private missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to be. And that's exactly what he contradicted when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The directive from the club is that he resigned, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why he permit it to get such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why was the coach not removed?

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

He claims Rodgers' words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Again

To return to better times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Rodgers respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

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

It was the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other supporters would have put it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans became a love-in once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when his goals came in contact with the club's business model, however.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it transpired again, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process the team conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for prospects to be secured, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club spent unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it to date, with one since having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity within the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.

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

A few months back there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source associated with the organization. It said that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his directors did not support his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was intended to harm him, which it accomplished. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was clear the manager was losing the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes