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Just a quarter of an hour following Celtic issued the news of their manager's surprising departure via a brief five-paragraph statement, the bombshell arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious fury.

In an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

The man he convinced to join the team when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting back in a box. Plus the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his departure from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering things he has expressed recently, he has been eager to secure a new position. He'll view this one as the perfect chance, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. The club could possibly make a call to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

All-out Effort at Reputation Destruction'

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

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a labeling of him as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who prizes decorum and places great store in business being done with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, this was a further example of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant figure, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the major calls he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He does not participate in club annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the organization with private missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's just what he went against when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he resigned, but reading his criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why did he allow it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the accusations that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the manager not removed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning information in public that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims his statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the team and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and improper."

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

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with the Club's Strategy Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan respected him and, really, to no one other.

It was the figure who drew the heat when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

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

The shareholder had his back. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an fragile peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with Celtic's business model, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish process Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for prospects 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 termed "flexibility" in the market. The fans concurred with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one since having departed - the manager pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He planted a controversy about a internal disunity inside the team and then walked away. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source associated with the organization. It said that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

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

Supporters were enraged. They now viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his shield because his directors wouldn't support his plans to achieve 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 dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the people in charge.

The frequent {gripes