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Just a quarter of an hour following the club released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

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

The man he convinced to come to the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the man he again turned to after the previous manager left for another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his exit from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Considering things he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He will see this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he give it up readily? It seems unlikely. The club might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a soothing presence for the time being.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's return - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the biggest shocking moment was the brutal manner Desmond described Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of falsehoods; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For a person who values decorum and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, this was a further illustration of how unusual situations have grown at the club.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to take all the major decisions he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with private missives to news outlets, but nothing is heard in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And it's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he stepped down, but reading his invective, line by line, you have to wonder why he permit it to get such a critical point?

If Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting things in public that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims his statements "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the directors. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an remarkable charge, that is. Lawyers might be preparing as we speak.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Once More'

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who drew the criticism when his comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other Celtic fans would have put it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters became a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with the club's operational approach, however.

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened once more, with added intensity, recently. He spoke openly about the slow process the team conducted their transfer business, the interminable waiting 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 "agility" in the transfer window. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of money in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with one since having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would usually downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like he was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that allegedly originated from a source close to the club. It said that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

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

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

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

At that point it was plain the manager was losing the support of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes