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Just a quarter of an hour following the club released the announcement of their manager's surprising departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

This individual he convinced to join the club when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and needed putting in their place. Plus the man he once more turned to after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the ferocity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill 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 continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Based on things he has expressed recently, he has been keen to secure another job. He'll view this role as the ultimate chance, a present from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the place where he experienced such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal way Desmond described Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator 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 values propriety and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was another illustration of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the one with the power to take all the important calls he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with confidential missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's just what he contradicted when launching all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he stepped down, but reviewing his invective, carefully, you have to wonder why he permit it to get this far down the line?

Assuming the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

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

He claims Rodgers' statements "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

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

His Ambition Clashed with the Club's Strategy Once More'

To return to happier times, they were close, the two men. Rodgers lauded Desmond at every turn, thanked him every chance. Rodgers deferred to him and, really, to no one other.

It was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had his back. Over time, the manager turned on the persuasion, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - always - going to be a point when his goals clashed with Celtic's operational approach, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it transpired again, with bells on, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process the team went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the necessity for what he termed "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Despite the club spent record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it to date, with one since having left - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, all are united, he'd say. It appeared like he was engaging in a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that allegedly came from a source close to the organization. It said that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

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

Supporters were angered. They now viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't support his vision to bring success.

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

By then it was clear Rodgers was shedding the backing of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes