🔗 Share this article

Merely a quarter of an hour after Celtic released the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the howitzer arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent fury.

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

The man he convinced to join the team when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and needed putting back in a box. And the figure he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping 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 dedicated to an unending series of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a time. Based on comments he has said lately, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Would he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of untruths, a spreader of falsehoods; disruptive, 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 places great store in business being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was a further example of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the authority to take all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend team annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an occasion or two to support the club with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And that's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The directive from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reviewing Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why did he allow it to get this far down the line?

If the manager is guilty of every one of the accusations that Desmond is alleging he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the coach not removed?

He has accused him of distorting things in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He says Rodgers' words "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards members of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

What an remarkable allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

His Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

To return to better times, they were close, the two men. The manager praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was the figure who drew the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters became a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' goals came in contact with the club's business model, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened once more, with bells on, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow way the team conducted their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well to date, with one already having left - the manager pushed for increased resources and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a insider close to the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not to be present and he was engineering his way out, this was the tone of the article.

Supporters were angered. They then saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his vision to bring success.

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

At that point it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes