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Just a quarter of an hour following Celtic issued the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious anger.

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

The man he persuaded to join the team when Rangers were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting in their place. And the man he again relied on after the previous manager left for another club in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of his critique, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous circuit of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a time. Considering comments he has said lately, he has been keen to secure another job. He'll see this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Would he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the most significant shocking moment was the harsh way the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

It was a forceful attempt at character assassination, a labeling of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unjustifiable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For somebody who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, this was a further illustration of how abnormal situations have become at the club.

The major figure, the club's most powerful figure, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the major decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He never attend club annual meetings, sending his son, Ross, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the organization with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is heard in the open.

This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And it's exactly what he went against when going all-out attack on Rodgers on that day.

The directive from the club is that he stepped down, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why he permit it to reach this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of every one of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to ask why was the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting information in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He claims his statements "played a part to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged hostility towards members of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Strategy Once More'

To return to happier days, they were tight, the two men. The manager praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

It was Desmond who drew the criticism when his returned happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most divisive hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Over time, Rodgers turned on the persuasion, delivered the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the fans became a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals clashed with the club's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, recently. He publicly commented about the sluggish process Celtic conducted their transfer business, the interminable delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the £6m further acquisition - none of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having left - Rodgers demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He planted a controversy about a internal disunity within the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly 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 report in a publication that purportedly originated from a insider associated with the club. It claimed that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his exit, that was the tone of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They then viewed him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn't support his vision to bring triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

By then it was clear Rodgers was shedding the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes