🔗 Share this article

Just fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

In 551-words, key investor Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

This individual he convinced to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. Plus the figure he once more turned to after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the summer of 2023.

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 departure from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an continuous series of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Considering comments he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure a new position. He'll view this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and praise.

Would he relinquish it easily? It seems unlikely. Celtic might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - as surreal as it is - can be set aside because the most significant shocking moment was the harsh manner the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

It was a forceful attempt at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a source of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," stated Desmond.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being done with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal situations have grown at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to make all the major decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He never participate in club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the organization with private messages to news outlets, but no statement is made in public.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And it's just what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on Monday.

The official line from the team is that Rodgers stepped down, but reviewing Desmond's invective, line by line, you have to wonder why he permit it to get such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not removed?

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

He claims his words "have contributed to a toxic environment around the team and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and improper."

What an extraordinary charge, indeed. Lawyers might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Model Again

To return to better times, they were close, the two men. Rodgers praised Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

It was the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the charm, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with Celtic's business model, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it transpired once more, with added intensity, over the last year. He publicly commented about the slow way the team went about their player acquisitions, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he spoke about the need for what he termed "agility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a calendar year on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have cut it to date, with Idah already having left - Rodgers demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his next news conference he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Internal issues? No, no, all are united, he'd say. It appeared 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 organization. It said that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was arranging his exit, that was the implication of the article.

The fans were angered. They now viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his directors wouldn't back his plans to achieve success.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was intended to harm him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was losing the backing of the people in charge.

The frequent {gripes