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Merely fifteen minutes after the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

In an extensive statement, major shareholder Desmond savaged his former ally.

The man he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. Plus the figure he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Based on things he has expressed lately, he has been keen to get a new position. He'll view this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he experienced such success and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the harsh manner Desmond wrote of the former manager.

It was a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For a person who prizes decorum and sets high importance in dealings being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was another illustration of how abnormal things have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to take all the major decisions he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend team annual meetings, dispatching his son, Ross, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

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

This is precisely how he's preferred it to be. And it's just what he went against when going all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the club is that he stepped down, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why he permit it to get such a critical point?

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

Desmond has charged him of spinning things in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He says Rodgers' words "have contributed to a toxic environment around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the management and the directors. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

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

His Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

To return to better days, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him every chance. Rodgers deferred to Dermot and, really, to no one other.

This was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

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

Desmond had his back. Gradually, the manager turned on the charm, delivered the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with the club's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with bells on, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish process the team went about their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he stated about the need for what he termed "flexibility" in the market. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive one signing, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it so far, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity within the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and almost contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that allegedly came from a source associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They then viewed him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't back his vision to achieve success.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to harm him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the people above him.

The regular {gripes