The Way Unrecoverable Collapse Led to a Savage Separation for Rodgers & Celtic FC

Just a quarter of an hour after Celtic released the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock resignation via a perfunctory short statement, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in obvious anger.

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

The man he convinced to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and required being in their place. Plus the figure he again relied on after the previous manager departed to Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was practically an after-thought.

Two decades after his departure from the club, and after a large part of his recent life was given over to an unending circuit of appearances and the playing of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is back in the dugout.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Based on things he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He will see this one as the perfect opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Will he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to sound out Postecoglou, but O'Neill will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the most significant shocking moment was the harsh manner the shareholder described Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; divisive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the cost of everyone else," wrote he.

For a person who values propriety and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, here was a further illustration of how unusual situations have grown at the club.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, moves in the background. The absentee totem, the one with the power to take all the major calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He never participate in club annual meetings, dispatching his son, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, does media talks about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the club with confidential missives to media organisations, but no statement is made in the open.

It's exactly how he's wanted it to be. And that's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on the manager on that day.

The official line from the team is that Rodgers resigned, but reviewing his criticism, line by line, one must question why did he permit it to get such a critical point?

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

He has charged him of spinning information in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.

He says Rodgers' words "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled animosity towards individuals of the executive team and the directors. A portion of the abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and improper."

Such an extraordinary charge, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we speak.

'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with the Club's Strategy Again

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

It was Desmond who drew the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive hiring, the return of the returning hero for a few or, as other supporters would have put it, the return of the shameless one, who left them in the difficulty for Leicester.

Desmond had Rodgers' back. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, achieved the victories and the honors, and an uneasy truce with the fans became a love-in once more.

It was inevitable - consistently - going to be a point when his goals clashed with the club's operational approach, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened again, with bells on, recently. He publicly commented about the sluggish process the team conducted their transfer business, the endless waiting for targets to be landed, then not landed, as was frequently the situation as far as he was believed.

Time and again he stated about the necessity for what he termed "flexibility" in the market. Supporters concurred with him.

Even when the organization spent unprecedented sums of money in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the £9m another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it to date, with one already having left - the manager demanded more and more and, often, he expressed this in openly.

He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then walked away. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent media briefing he would usually downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, all are united, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly came from a insider close to the organization. It said that the manager was damaging Celtic with his open criticisms and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.

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

The fans were angered. They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be removed on his shield because his directors did not support his vision to bring triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, of course, and it was intended to harm him, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we heard nothing further about it.

At that point it was clear the manager was losing the backing of the individuals in charge.

The regular {gripes