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Merely fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a brief short communication, the bombshell landed, courtesy of the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

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

The man he persuaded to come to the team when Rangers were getting uppity in 2016 and needed putting in their place. And the figure he again turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

Such was the severity of his takedown, the astonishing comeback of Martin O'Neill was practically an after-thought.

Twenty years after his departure from the club, and after much of his recent life was dedicated to an unending circuit 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 maybe for a time. Considering things he has expressed recently, he has been eager to get another job. He'll see this role as the ultimate chance, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such success and adulation.

Would he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

The new manager's return - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant 'wow!' development was the harsh manner Desmond described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the cost of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For somebody who prizes propriety and places great store in dealings being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, this was a further example of how unusual situations have become at the club.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, operates in the background. The remote leader, the individual with the power to make all the important decisions he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any public forum.

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

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

This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And that's just what he contradicted when going all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

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

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the manager not dismissed?

He has charged him of distorting things in open forums that did not tally with the facts.

He claims Rodgers' words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the management and the directors. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unwarranted and improper."

Such an remarkable charge, indeed. Lawyers might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Model Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. The manager lauded Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan respected him and, really, to no one other.

It was Desmond who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have put it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.

The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

There was always - always - going to be a moment when Rodgers' goals came in contact with Celtic's business model, though.

This occurred in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, recently. He spoke openly about the sluggish process Celtic went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.

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

Even when the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well to date, with one already having left - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion within the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would usually minimize it and nearly reverse what he said.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, all are united, he'd say. It looked like he was playing a dangerous game.

A few months back there was a story in a publication that purportedly came from a insider associated with the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging Celtic with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

Supporters were angered. They now viewed him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his shield because his board members did not support his plans to bring success.

This disclosure was damaging, of course, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we learned nothing further about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the individuals above him.

The regular {gripes