🔗 Share this article

Merely a quarter of an hour after Celtic issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a brief short statement, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

Through an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

This individual he convinced to come to the club when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and needed putting in their place. Plus the figure he again relied on after the previous manager left for another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was given over to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a time. Based on comments he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure a new position. He will view this one as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Would he give it up readily? It seems unlikely. The club might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a soothing presence for the time being.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's reappearance - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the harsh way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a labeling of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who values decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright secrecy, here was another example of how unusual situations have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the club's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the power to take all the important decisions he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in team annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's reluctant to communicate.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with private messages to news outlets, but no statement is heard in public.

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

The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why did he permit it to get this far down the line?

If the manager is guilty of all of the accusations that Desmond is alleging he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the coach not removed?

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

He claims his words "have contributed to a hostile environment around the team and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the management and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and improper."

Such an remarkable allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Model Again

To return to better days, they were close, the two men. The manager praised Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

It was the figure who took the heat when Rodgers' comeback occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who departed in the lurch for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, delivered the wins and the honors, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a love-in again.

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

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with bells on, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish process the team went about their transfer business, the interminable delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he termed "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the organization splurged record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the £9m another player and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having left - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, often, he did it in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity inside the club and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would usually downplay it and nearly contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like he was engaging in a risky game.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that allegedly originated from a insider close to the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his way out, that was the implication of the story.

Supporters were angered. They then saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his shield because his directors wouldn't back his plans to bring triumph.

The leak was damaging, of course, and it was meant to harm Rodgers, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was losing the support of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes