🔗 Share this article

Just a quarter of an hour following Celtic released the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief short statement, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in apparent anger.

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

This individual he convinced to come to the team when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being back in a box. Plus the figure he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was given over to an unending series of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a while. Considering things he has said recently, O'Neill has been eager to secure a new position. He'll view this role as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he experienced such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well make a call to sound out their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest shocking moment was the harsh way Desmond described the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a labeling of him as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For somebody who prizes decorum and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, this was a further example of how abnormal situations have grown at the club.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to make all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not participate in club annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does interviews about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is made in the open.

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

The directive from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reading his criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why did he allow it to reach such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to ask why had been the manager not removed?

He has accused him of spinning information in public that were inconsistent with reality.

He says his words "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the executive team and the directors. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an extraordinary charge, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, really, to nobody else.

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

It was the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an fragile peace with the fans became a love-in again.

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

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with bells on, over the last year. He publicly commented about the sluggish process the team went about their player acquisitions, the endless delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with one since having departed - the manager pushed for increased resources and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a bomb about a internal disunity within the club and then walked away. Upon questioning about his comments at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was engaging in a risky game.

A few months back there was a report in a publication that purportedly originated from a source associated with the club. It said that the manager was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was arranging his exit, this was the tone of the article.

Supporters were angered. They then viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was plain the manager was losing the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes