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Merely a quarter of an hour following Celtic released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising departure via a perfunctory short communication, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

Through 551-words, key investor Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

The man he persuaded to come to the team when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the man he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

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

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after a large part of his recent life was dedicated to an unending series of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Considering comments he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He'll view this one as the ultimate chance, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. Celtic could possibly make a call to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote he.

For somebody who prizes decorum and sets high importance in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, here was another example of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the important decisions he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with private missives to news outlets, but no statement is heard in the open.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to remain. And it's exactly what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the club is that he stepped down, but reviewing his invective, line by line, one must question why he permit it to get this far down the line?

If the manager is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why was the coach not removed?

He has accused him of distorting information in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He says Rodgers' words "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the management and the directors. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

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

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

To return to happier days, they were tight, the two men. The manager praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him every chance. Rodgers respected Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial hiring, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' back. Gradually, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when his ambition came in contact with the club's business model, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the sluggish process Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for targets to be secured, then missed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well to date, with one already having departed - the manager demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

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

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that purportedly originated from a source close to the club. It said that Rodgers was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They then saw him as similar to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his vision to bring triumph.

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

By then it was clear Rodgers was losing the backing of the individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes