The Way Irretrievable Breakdown Led to a Savage Parting for Rodgers & Celtic

Just fifteen minutes after Celtic issued the news of their manager's surprising resignation via a brief five-paragraph communication, the bombshell landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious anger.

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

This individual he persuaded to come to the club when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being in their place. Plus the figure he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

Such was the ferocity of Desmond's critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was almost an after-thought.

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 playing of all his old hits at the team, O'Neill is returned in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a time. Considering comments he has said recently, O'Neill has been keen to secure another job. He will see this one as the perfect chance, a gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he give it up readily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly reach out to contact their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the moment.

All-out Effort at Reputation Destruction'

O'Neill's return - however strange as it may be - can be parked because the most significant shocking moment was the harsh way the shareholder wrote of the former manager.

This constituted a full-blooded endeavor at character assassination, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, deceptive and unacceptable. "One individual's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," wrote Desmond.

For a person who prizes decorum and places great store in dealings being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal things have become at the club.

Desmond, the organization's most powerful figure, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the authority to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not participate in club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about Celtic unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's slow to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the club with private messages to media organisations, but nothing is made in public.

It's exactly how he's preferred it to be. And it's exactly what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.

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

Assuming Rodgers is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why had been the manager not removed?

He has charged him of spinning things in public that did not tally with the facts.

He claims his statements "have contributed to a hostile atmosphere around the club and encouraged hostility towards individuals of the executive team and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."

What an extraordinary charge, that is. Lawyers might be preparing as we discuss.

His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Model Again

To return to happier days, they were close, the two men. Rodgers lauded the shareholder at every turn, thanked him every chance. Brendan respected Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

It was the figure who took the heat when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.

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

Desmond had his support. Gradually, Rodgers employed the charm, achieved the wins and the trophies, and an fragile truce with the fans became a love-in once more.

There was always - consistently - going to be a point when his goals came in contact with the club's operational approach, however.

This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened again, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish process Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the interminable waiting for targets to be secured, 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 "agility" in the transfer window. The fans concurred with him.

Even when the club spent record amounts of money in a calendar year on the £11m Arne Engels, the £9m Adam Idah and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well so far, with one since having left - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he did it in openly.

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 nearly reverse what he said.

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

Earlier this year there was a story in a publication that purportedly originated from a insider associated with the organization. It claimed that Rodgers was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not 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 wouldn't support his plans to achieve triumph.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to hurt him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the guilty person to be dismissed. If there was a examination then we learned no more about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was losing the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes