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Merely a quarter of an hour following Celtic released the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief short communication, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to come to the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and required being back in a box. And the man he again turned to after the previous manager left for another club in the summer of 2023.

Such was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was given over to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a time. Based on comments he has said recently, he has been eager to get another job. He'll see this one as the perfect opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Would he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal manner the shareholder described the former manager.

This constituted a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," stated he.

For somebody who prizes decorum and sets high importance in dealings being done with discretion, if not complete secrecy, this was a further example of how abnormal situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, moves in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, Ross, instead. He rarely, 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 missives to media organisations, but no statement is heard in the open.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to remain. And that's just what he went against when launching all-out attack on the manager on that day.

The official line from the club is that he resigned, but reading his invective, line by line, one must question why did he allow it to get this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the manager not removed?

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

He claims his words "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an remarkable allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

To return to better times, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was the figure who drew the heat when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other Celtic fans would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had his support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, achieved the wins and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

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

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow process Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the club splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having left - the manager pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would usually downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like he was engaging in a dangerous game.

A few months back there was a story in a publication that purportedly originated from a source associated with the organization. It said that the manager was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was engineering his exit, this was the tone of the story.

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his vision to achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it accomplished. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear Rodgers was losing the backing of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes