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Merely a quarter of an hour after Celtic released the news of their manager's surprising departure via a brief short communication, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

In an extensive statement, major shareholder Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

The man he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the figure he again turned to after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a time. Based on things he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been eager to get a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the place where he experienced such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal way the shareholder described the former manager.

It was a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a source of untruths, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For a person who prizes propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, here was another illustration of how abnormal situations have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the important decisions he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He never attend club AGMs, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with private messages to news outlets, but no statement is made in public.

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

The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reading his invective, line by line, one must question why he permit it to reach such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the coach not dismissed?

He has accused him of spinning things in public that did not tally with reality.

He says Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the directors. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

What an extraordinary charge, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

Looking back to better times, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to him and, truly, to no one other.

This 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 a few or, as some other supporters would have put it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had his back. Gradually, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a affectionate relationship once more.

It was inevitable - consistently - 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 bells on, recently. He publicly commented about the sluggish process the team conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the club splurged unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one since having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity inside the club and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Internal issues? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like he was playing a dangerous strategy.

A few months back there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source close to the club. It claimed that the manager was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be present and he was arranging his way out, this was the tone of the article.

The fans were enraged. They now viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't support his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to hurt him, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. If there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was shedding the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes