🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes after Celtic released the announcement of their manager's surprising departure via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious anger.

Through 551-words, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

The man he persuaded to come to the club when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and required being in their place. And the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after much of his latter years was given over to an unending series of public speaking engagements 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 time. Based on comments he has expressed lately, he has been keen to secure another job. He'll view this role as the perfect chance, a present from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well make a call to sound out their ex-manager, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - however strange as it is - can be parked because the most significant 'wow!' development was the harsh manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unjustifiable. "A single person's wish for self-interest at the expense of others," stated he.

For a person who values propriety and places great store in business being done with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, here was another example of how unusual things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, moves in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to make all the important calls he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not participate in team annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're glowing in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to support the organization with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is made in the open.

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

The directive from the club is that he resigned, but reviewing his criticism, line by line, you have to wonder why did he allow it to reach this far down the line?

If Rodgers is culpable of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the coach not removed?

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

He claims Rodgers' words "have contributed to a hostile environment around the team and encouraged animosity towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

What an remarkable allegation, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

His Ambition Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

Looking back to better days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised Desmond at every turn, thanked him every chance. Rodgers deferred to him and, really, to no one other.

This was Desmond who drew the criticism when his comeback occurred, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, the manager turned on the persuasion, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an fragile peace with the supporters became a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when his goals clashed with the club's business model, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the interminable delay 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 necessity for what he called "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m further acquisition - all of whom have cut it to date, with one already having left - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, often, he expressed this in public.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would usually minimize it and almost reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was playing a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that allegedly originated from a insider close to the club. It said that the manager was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his way out, this was the implication of the story.

The fans were enraged. They then saw him as similar to a martyr who might be removed on his shield because his board members did not back his plans to achieve success.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to hurt him, which it accomplished. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear Rodgers was shedding the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes