🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes after Celtic released the announcement of their manager's surprising departure via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

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

This individual he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were getting uppity in 2016 and required being back in a box. Plus the man he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

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

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Based on things he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been eager to get a new position. He'll view this role as the perfect 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 contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' moment was the harsh way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted 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 everyone else," stated Desmond.

For somebody who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was another example of how unusual things have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful presence, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to take all the major decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in club AGMs, dispatching his son, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential messages to media organisations, but nothing is heard in the open.

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

The official line from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why he allow it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning things in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He says his words "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and encouraged animosity towards members of the management and the directors. 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 preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with the Club's Strategy Again

Looking back to better times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded the shareholder at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was the figure who took the heat when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had his support. Over time, Rodgers employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when his ambition clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he stated about the necessity for what he called "agility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the £9m Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with one since having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, often, he did it in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the team and then walked away. Upon questioning 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 claim. It looked like he was engaging in a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly came from a source associated with the organization. It said that the manager was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his way out, this was the implication of the story.

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn't back his vision to achieve success.

The leak was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was losing the support of the individuals above him.

The regular {gripes