🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes after the club issued the news of their manager's surprising departure via a brief short statement, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent fury.

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

The man he convinced to join the team when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. Plus the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his exit from the organization, and after a large part 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, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Based on comments he has expressed recently, he has been eager to get another job. He'll see this role as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal way Desmond described Rodgers.

It was a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, this was another example of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He never participate in club AGMs, sending his son, Ross, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the club with private missives to media organisations, but nothing is made in public.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's exactly what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on the manager on that day.

The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reviewing his invective, carefully, you have to wonder why he permit it to get such a critical point?

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the manager not removed?

Desmond has charged him of spinning information in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He says his statements "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the executive team and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

Such an extraordinary allegation, indeed. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with the Club's Strategy Once More'

To return to happier days, they were close, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Rodgers respected Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

It was Desmond who took the heat when his returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had his support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans became a affectionate relationship once more.

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

It happened in his first incarnation and it transpired again, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow way the team went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he spoke about the necessity for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Despite the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive one signing, the costly another player and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a bomb about a internal disunity inside the team and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd say. It appeared like he was engaging in a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that allegedly came from a source close to the club. It claimed that the manager was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

He desired not to be there and he was arranging his exit, that was the tone of the story.

The fans were enraged. They now viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his directors did not back his vision to achieve success.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes