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Merely a quarter of an hour following Celtic issued the news of their manager's shock departure via a brief five-paragraph communication, the bombshell arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

Through 551-words, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to come to the team when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the figure he once more relied on after the previous manager left for another club in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of Martin O'Neill was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an unending series of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Considering comments he has said lately, O'Neill has been keen to get another job. He'll see this role as the ultimate chance, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the place where he experienced such glory and praise.

Will he give it up easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the harsh manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," stated he.

For a person who prizes decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was a further illustration of how unusual situations have grown at the club.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful presence, operates in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He never attend team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with confidential missives to media organisations, but no statement is heard in public.

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

The directive from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reading Desmond's criticism, line by line, one must question why did he permit it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why was the coach not dismissed?

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

He claims Rodgers' words "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Ambition Clashed with Celtic's Model Again

To return to better times, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, truly, to nobody else.

It was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers turned on the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the fans became a love-in once more.

There was always - always - going to be a point when his goals clashed with Celtic's operational approach, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it transpired again, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the sluggish process the team conducted their transfer business, the endless waiting for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the club splurged record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with Idah already having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

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

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a publication that allegedly originated from a insider associated with the organization. It claimed that the manager was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was arranging his exit, this was the tone of the story.

The fans were enraged. They then viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his directors wouldn't support his vision to achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was intended to hurt him, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

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

The frequent {gripes