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Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the howitzer landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious fury.

In an extensive statement, key investor Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he convinced to come to the club when Rangers were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the figure he again turned to after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the playing of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

Currently - and maybe for a while. Based on comments he has said recently, O'Neill has been eager to secure another job. He will view this role as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the environment where he experienced such glory and praise.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a balm for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest shocking development was the harsh manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a branding of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a disseminator of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's wish for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," stated he.

For a person who values decorum and places great store in dealings being conducted with discretion, if not complete secrecy, here was another example of how abnormal situations have become at Celtic.

Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not participate in club annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're glowing in tone. And still, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to defend the organization with private missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in the open.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to remain. And that's just what he went against when going all-out attack on the manager on that day.

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

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the accusations that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the manager not removed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting information in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims his words "have contributed to a hostile environment around the team and fuelled animosity towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

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

His Ambition Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Once More'

Looking back to better times, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, truly, to no one other.

It was the figure who drew the heat when his comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have put it, the return of the shameless one, who left them in the lurch for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' back. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, delivered the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy peace with the supporters became a love-in again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a moment when his goals came in contact with the club's operational approach, however.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow way Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the endless delay for prospects to be secured, then missed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

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

Even when the organization splurged unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah already having left - the manager pushed for more and more and, often, he expressed this in public.

He set a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the team and then walked away. Upon questioning about his comments 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 appeared like he was playing a dangerous strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a insider close to the club. It claimed that the manager was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be present and he was engineering his exit, this was the tone of the article.

The fans were enraged. They then viewed him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his honor because his board members did not support his plans to achieve success.

The leak was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt him, which it accomplished. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a examination then we heard nothing further about it.

By then it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes