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Merely a quarter of an hour following the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a perfunctory short communication, the bombshell arrived, from the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he convinced to come to the team when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being back in a box. Plus the man he once more relied on after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's critique, the astonishing return of Martin O'Neill was practically an secondary note.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending series of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and perhaps for a while. Based on comments he has said lately, he has been keen to get another job. He will view this role as the perfect chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Will he give it up easily? It seems unlikely. The club could possibly make a call to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Reputation Destruction'

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

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a labeling of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For a person who values propriety and places great store in business being conducted with discretion, if not complete secrecy, here was a further example of how abnormal things have become at the club.

Desmond, the club's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He does not participate in team AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And still, 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 public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's just what he contradicted when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on that day.

The official line from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reading his criticism, line by line, one must question why he permit it to get this far down the line?

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to ask why had been the manager not dismissed?

He has charged him of spinning information in public that did not tally with the facts.

He says his statements "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we discuss.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Again

Looking back to happier days, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

It was the figure who drew the criticism when his comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most divisive hiring, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had his support. Gradually, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy peace with the supporters turned into a love-in again.

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 initial tenure and it happened again, with added intensity, recently. He spoke openly about the slow process the team went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for targets to be secured, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he spoke about the necessity for what he termed "flexibility" in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well so far, with Idah since having left - Rodgers demanded more and more and, often, he did it in public.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity inside the team and then walked away. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly came from a source close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim 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 enraged. They then saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members wouldn't support his vision to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was losing the backing of the people in charge.

The frequent {gripes