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Just a quarter of an hour after the club issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph statement, the bombshell arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

This individual he persuaded to join the club when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. And the man he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the ferocity of his critique, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit of appearances and the playing of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

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

Will he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. The club might well make a call to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the time being.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's return - however strange as it is - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' moment was the brutal manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded endeavor at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the cost of others," stated he.

For somebody who prizes propriety and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was a further illustration of how unusual situations have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to take all the important calls he pleases without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in club annual meetings, sending his son, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives interviews about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the organization with confidential messages to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

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

The directive from the club is that he resigned, but reviewing his invective, line by line, one must question why he allow it to get such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it's fair to ask why had been the coach not removed?

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

He claims his words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards members of the management and the board. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

What an remarkable charge, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

His Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Strategy Again

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

It was the figure who drew the heat when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the shameless one, who left them in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when his goals came in contact with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened again, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish process the team conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he stated about the necessity for what he termed "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well so far, with one since having departed - the manager pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He planted a bomb about a internal disunity inside the club and then walked away. When asked about his comments at his next media briefing he would typically 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 dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that allegedly originated from a source associated with the organization. It said that the manager was damaging Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was managing his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his exit, that was the implication of the story.

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors did not support his vision to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. If there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

By then it was clear Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes