🔗 Share this article

Merely fifteen minutes after Celtic issued the news of their manager's shock departure via a brief short communication, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

In 551-words, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his old chum.

This individual he persuaded to come to the team when their rivals were gaining ground in that period and required being back in a box. And the figure he again turned to after the previous manager departed to another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after a large part of his latter years was dedicated to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has said recently, he has been keen to get another job. He'll see this one as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to sound out their ex-manager, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

O'Neill's return - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a forceful endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who prizes propriety and places great store in business being done with confidentiality, if not complete secrecy, this was a further illustration of how unusual things have become at the club.

Desmond, the organization's dominant figure, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the power to make all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, Ross, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's reluctant to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the club with confidential missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in the open.

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

The directive from the club is that he resigned, but reviewing Desmond's criticism, carefully, you have to wonder why he allow it to reach this far down the line?

If 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 coach not removed?

Desmond has accused him of distorting things in public that were inconsistent with the facts.

He says Rodgers' words "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and encouraged animosity towards members of the executive team and the directors. Some of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable allegation, indeed. Lawyers might be preparing as we speak.

His Ambition Conflicted with the Club's Strategy Again

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

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

It was the most controversial appointment, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for Leicester.

The shareholder had his back. Gradually, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a love-in again.

There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when Rodgers' goals came in contact with the club's operational approach, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow way the team conducted their transfer business, the interminable waiting for targets to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was concerned.

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

Despite the club splurged unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having left - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he did it in public.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity within the club and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would typically minimize it and almost contradict what he stated.

Internal issues? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

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

He desired not to be there and he was engineering his exit, this was the implication of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They then saw him as similar to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his honor because his directors wouldn't support his vision to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was intended to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. If there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

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

The frequent {gripes