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Merely a quarter of an hour after the club released the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious fury.

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

This individual he persuaded to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. And the figure he once more turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

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

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an unending circuit of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

For now - and maybe for a time. Considering comments he has expressed recently, he has been eager to secure another job. He will see this role as the ultimate chance, a present from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the place where he enjoyed such glory and praise.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club could possibly make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal manner the shareholder described the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "A single person's desire for self-preservation at the expense of others," stated Desmond.

For somebody who prizes decorum and places great store in business being conducted with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was another illustration of how abnormal situations have grown at the club.

Desmond, the club's dominant presence, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to make all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He does not participate in team annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does interviews about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is heard in the open.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the club is that he stepped down, but reviewing his criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why did 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 responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why had been the coach not dismissed?

He has accused him of distorting information in public that did not tally with the facts.

He claims Rodgers' words "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unwarranted and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we speak.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Again

To return to better times, they were close, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

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

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 departed in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, the manager employed the charm, achieved the wins and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with bells on, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he termed "agility" in the market. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m further acquisition - none of whom have performed well so far, with one already having left - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity within the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and almost contradict what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly came from a source close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

The fans were angered. They now saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his honor because his board members wouldn't support his vision to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to harm him, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the individuals above him.

The frequent {gripes