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Merely a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the howitzer landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

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

The man he convinced to join the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and required being back in a box. And the man he again turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was given over to an unending circuit of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure a new position. He'll see this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

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

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal way the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a forceful attempt at character assassination, a labeling of him as untrustful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

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

The major figure, the club's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to take all the major decisions he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the organization with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is heard in the open.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's exactly what he went against when going full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

The directive from the club is that Rodgers stepped down, but reviewing his criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why he permit it to reach such a critical point?

If Rodgers is culpable of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the coach not dismissed?

He has accused him of spinning information in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

He claims Rodgers' words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards members of the executive team and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

What an remarkable allegation, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded Desmond at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan respected him and, really, to no one other.

This was the figure who drew the criticism when Rodgers' comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had his support. Over time, Rodgers employed the charm, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters became a affectionate relationship again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals clashed with the club's operational approach, though.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened again, with bells on, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process Celtic went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Despite the organization splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one already having left - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his next news conference he would usually downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was engaging in a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that purportedly came from a insider close to the club. It claimed that the manager was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his way out, this was the tone of the article.

Supporters were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his directors did not back his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was poisonous, naturally, and it was intended to harm him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

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

The frequent {gripes