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Just fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the announcement of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief short communication, the howitzer arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

In 551-words, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

The man he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being back in a box. Plus the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

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

Two decades after his exit from the organization, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Considering things he has expressed recently, he has been eager to get another job. He'll view this one as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Would he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. The club might well reach out to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's return - however strange as it is - can be parked because the most significant shocking moment was the brutal way Desmond wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as deceitful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of misinformation; divisive, misleading and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote he.

For a person who prizes decorum and places great store in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, this was a further example of how abnormal things have grown at the club.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful figure, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the power to make all the major calls he wants without having the responsibility of explaining them in any open setting.

He never attend club annual meetings, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's reluctant 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 preferred it to remain. And that's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The directive from the team is that he resigned, but reading his invective, carefully, one must question why he permit it to reach this far down the line?

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it's fair to ask why had been the coach not dismissed?

He has accused him of distorting things in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims his words "played a part to a hostile environment around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and improper."

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

'Rodgers' Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

To return to better days, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to him and, really, to nobody else.

This was the figure who drew the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the returning hero for a few or, as other supporters 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 turned on the charm, delivered the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy peace with the fans turned into a love-in again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with Celtic's operational approach, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow way Celtic conducted their player acquisitions, the endless delay 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 called "agility" in the market. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the club spent record amounts of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having left - the manager pushed for more and more and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would usually minimize it and almost contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like Rodgers was playing a dangerous strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a publication that purportedly came from a source associated with the organization. It said that Rodgers was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his departure plan.

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

The fans were enraged. They then saw him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his directors wouldn't support his vision to achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it accomplished. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was clear Rodgers was shedding the support of the people in charge.

The regular {gripes