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Merely a quarter of an hour after Celtic issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

The man he convinced to join the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. And the figure he again turned to after the previous manager left for another club in the recent offseason.

So intense was the ferocity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has said recently, he has been eager to get a new position. He will see this one as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Will he give it up readily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a soothing presence for the time being.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it is - can be parked because the biggest 'wow!' development was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, here was a further illustration of how unusual situations have become at the club.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, moves in the background. The remote leader, the one with the authority to take all the important decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.

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

There have been instances on an occasion or two to defend the club with private missives to news outlets, but nothing is heard in public.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to remain. And that's just what he contradicted when going full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

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

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

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

He claims his statements "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled hostility towards members of the executive team and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and improper."

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

His Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Model Once More'

To return to happier times, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, really, to no one other.

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

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other supporters would have put it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile peace with the supporters became a love-in once more.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when his goals clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with bells on, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Despite the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the club and then walked away. Upon questioning about his remarks at his next news conference he would typically downplay it and almost reverse what he said.

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

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his way out, that was the implication of the story.

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his directors did not back his vision to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we heard no more about it.

By then it was plain the manager was losing the support of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes