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Merely a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of their manager's shock resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph communication, the bombshell arrived, from the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

Through 551-words, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to join the team when their rivals were getting uppity in 2016 and required being in their place. Plus the man he again relied on after the previous manager left for another club in the recent offseason.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was almost an after-thought.

Twenty years after his departure from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was given over to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his past successes at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Based on things he has said recently, O'Neill has been eager to secure a new position. He'll see this one as the perfect opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he experienced such success and praise.

Will he relinquish it easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to sound out Postecoglou, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

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

It was a forceful attempt at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who values propriety and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, this was another example of how unusual things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the authority to make all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

He never participate in team annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an occasion or two to defend the club with confidential missives to news outlets, but no statement is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's exactly what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.

The official line from the team is that he resigned, but reviewing his criticism, line by line, one must question why did he allow 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 was the manager not dismissed?

Desmond has charged him of distorting things in open forums that were inconsistent with the facts.

He says his words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the team and encouraged animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. Some of the abuse aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be preparing as we discuss.

His Ambition Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Again

Looking back to better days, they were tight, the two men. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who took the heat when Rodgers' comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, 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 difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had his back. Over time, Rodgers turned on the persuasion, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy peace with the supporters turned into a love-in again.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' ambition clashed with Celtic's business model, however.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it transpired once more, with bells on, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow way the team went about their transfer business, the interminable delay for prospects to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

Repeatedly he stated about the need for what he termed "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the club spent record amounts of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the £6m Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having departed - the manager pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He planted a bomb about a internal disunity within the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would typically minimize it and nearly contradict what he said.

Internal issues? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like he was playing a risky strategy.

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly originated from a source close to the club. It said that the manager was damaging the team with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He desired not to be present and he was engineering his way out, this was the implication of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They then saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be removed on his honor because his board members wouldn't back his plans to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to harm him, which it accomplished. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be dismissed. Whether there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

By then it was plain Rodgers was losing the backing of the people above him.

The regular {gripes