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Just a quarter of an hour after the club released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent fury.

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

The man he convinced to join the team when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. And the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the recent offseason.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an unending circuit of appearances 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 while. Based on things he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He'll see this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the most significant shocking development was the harsh way the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the cost of others," wrote he.

For somebody who values decorum and places great store in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not complete secrecy, here was another example of how unusual situations have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to make all the major decisions he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He never attend team annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, Ross, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but no statement is made in the open.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's just what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he resigned, but reading his invective, carefully, you have to wonder why he allow it to get such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is culpable of every one of the things that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why was the coach not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning things in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

He claims his words "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the directors. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable charge, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

His Ambition Conflicted with Celtic's Model Once More'

To return to better times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to him and, truly, to nobody else.

This was the figure who took the heat when Rodgers' comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

Desmond had his back. Over time, the manager employed the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile peace with the fans became a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' ambition clashed with the club's operational approach, however.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with bells on, over the last year. He spoke openly about the sluggish process the team went about their player acquisitions, the endless delay for targets to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he termed "agility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the expensive one signing, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have cut it so far, with one since having left - the manager pushed for increased resources 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 news conference he would typically downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd claim. It appeared like he was engaging in a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly originated from a insider associated with the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

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

Supporters were enraged. They now viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his board members did not back his vision to bring triumph.

The leak was damaging, of course, and it was intended to harm him, which it accomplished. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

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

The regular {gripes