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Merely a quarter of an hour after the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a brief five-paragraph statement, the howitzer landed, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in obvious anger.

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

This individual he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. And the figure he once more relied on after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his takedown, the astonishing comeback of Martin O'Neill was almost an secondary note.

Two decades after his exit from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Based on things he has said recently, he has been keen to get another job. He will view this one as the ultimate chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the place where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Would he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly make a call to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the time being.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's return - as surreal as it is - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' development was the harsh way the shareholder described the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as untrustful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For a person who values decorum and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was another example of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's most powerful figure, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the important decisions he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not attend club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, Ross, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the organization with confidential messages to media organisations, but no statement is heard in the open.

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

The official line from the club is that Rodgers stepped down, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why he allow it to reach such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of all of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the coach not dismissed?

He has charged him of spinning information in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He says Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the club and encouraged animosity towards members of the management and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable."

What an remarkable charge, indeed. Legal representatives might be preparing as we speak.

His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Model Again

To return to better days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who drew the criticism when his returned occurred, after the previous manager.

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 shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the persuasion, delivered the wins and the honors, and an fragile peace with the supporters became a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when his goals came in contact with the club's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish process Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable 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 called "agility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Despite the club splurged unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the £9m Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it so far, with one already having departed - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then walked away. Upon questioning about his comments at his next media briefing he would typically downplay it and almost contradict what he stated.

Internal issues? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that allegedly came from a insider close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his departure plan.

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

The fans were angered. They then viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his board members did not back his plans to bring success.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was clear Rodgers was losing the backing of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes