🔗 Share this article

Just a quarter of an hour after Celtic issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a brief short statement, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious anger.

Through 551-words, major shareholder Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he convinced to come to the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and needed putting back in a box. And the figure he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the ferocity of his critique, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after a large part of his recent life was given over to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Considering things he has expressed recently, he has been eager to secure another job. He'll see this role as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he experienced such success and praise.

Will he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a soothing presence for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

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

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a labeling of him as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For a person who prizes decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was a further example of how unusual situations have become at the club.

Desmond, the club's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to take all the important calls he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He never participate in club annual meetings, sending his offspring, Ross, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic 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 organization with confidential missives to media organisations, but no statement is heard in the open.

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

The official line from the club is that he resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, carefully, one must question why he allow it to get this far down the line?

If Rodgers is culpable of all of the accusations that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why was the coach not removed?

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

He says Rodgers' statements "played a part to a toxic environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Ambition Conflicted with Celtic's Model Once More'

To return to happier days, they were close, the two men. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an fragile peace with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - always - going to be a point when his ambition came in contact with the club's operational approach, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have cut it so far, with Idah already having left - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, often, he expressed this in public.

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

Internal issues? Not at all, all are united, he'd claim. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source associated with the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was arranging his way out, that was the tone of the story.

Supporters were enraged. They now saw him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors did not back his plans to bring success.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to hurt him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

At that point it was plain the manager was losing the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes