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Just fifteen minutes following Celtic issued the announcement of their manager's surprising departure via a brief five-paragraph statement, the bombshell landed, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.

Through an extensive statement, major shareholder Desmond eviscerated his former ally.

This individual he convinced to join the team when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. Plus the figure he again turned to after the previous manager left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the severity of Desmond's takedown, the jaw-dropping return of Martin O'Neill was almost an secondary note.

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

Currently - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has expressed lately, he has been keen to secure a new position. He'll see this role as the perfect chance, a present from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he experienced such success and adulation.

Would he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well make a call to contact their ex-manager, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'

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

This constituted a forceful endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as untrustful, a source of falsehoods, a disseminator of falsehoods; disruptive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," stated he.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in dealings being conducted with confidentiality, if not complete privacy, this was another illustration of how abnormal things have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's most powerful presence, operates in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the authority to make all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any open setting.

He never participate in club AGMs, sending his son, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, does media talks about the team unless they're glowing in tone. And even then, he's slow to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the organization with private missives to news outlets, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's exactly what he contradicted when going all-out attack on the manager on Monday.

The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reading Desmond's criticism, line by line, one must question why did he permit it to reach such a critical point?

Assuming the manager is culpable of all of the things that Desmond is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to inquire why was the coach not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning information in open forums that did not tally with reality.

He claims his words "have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the team and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. A portion of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been completely unwarranted and unacceptable."

Such an remarkable allegation, indeed. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Model Again

Looking back to better times, they were close, the two men. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Rodgers respected Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

This was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' comeback happened, after the previous manager.

This marked the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for some supporters or, as other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

Desmond had Rodgers' support. Gradually, the manager employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy peace with the fans became a love-in again.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when his ambition came in contact with the club's business model, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired again, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the slow process the team went about their transfer business, the endless waiting for prospects to be landed, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was concerned.

Time and again he spoke about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the organization spent record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - none of whom have performed well to date, with Idah already having left - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

He set a controversy about a internal disunity within the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would usually minimize it and almost reverse what he stated.

Internal issues? No, no, all are united, he'd claim. It looked like he was engaging in a dangerous game.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that allegedly came from a source close to the organization. It claimed that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He didn't want to be there and he was engineering his way out, that was the tone of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They then 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 achieve success.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. If there was a examination then we heard no more about it.

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

The regular {gripes