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Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief short statement, the bombshell landed, courtesy of the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

In 551-words, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

This individual he convinced to join the team when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting back in a box. Plus the man he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending series of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Considering comments he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He'll view this role as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the place where he enjoyed such glory and praise.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal manner Desmond wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the cost of others," stated he.

For somebody who values decorum and places great store in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, here was another example of how unusual situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to make all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend team annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the organization with private messages to media organisations, but nothing is made in the open.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And that's exactly what he contradicted when launching all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the team is that he resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why he permit it to get such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of every one of the things that Desmond is alleging he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why had been the coach not removed?

He has charged him of spinning things in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the team and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the management and the directors. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and improper."

Such an remarkable charge, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

To return to happier times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised the shareholder at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the heat when his comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager employed the persuasion, delivered the wins and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' ambition came in contact with Celtic's business model, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with bells on, over the last year. He publicly commented about the slow process Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the endless delay 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 termed "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.

Despite the organization splurged record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have performed well so far, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, often, he did it in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that allegedly came from a insider close to the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his way out, that was the tone of the article.

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his vision to bring triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it accomplished. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain the manager was shedding the support of the people in charge.

The frequent {gripes