The Way Irretrievable Collapse Led to a Brutal Parting for Brendan Rodgers & Celtic FC

Merely a quarter of an hour following the club released the news of Brendan Rodgers' surprising resignation via a brief short communication, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with clear signs in obvious anger.

Through 551-words, major shareholder Desmond savaged his old chum.

The man he persuaded to come to the club when Rangers were getting uppity in that period and required being back in a box. Plus the figure he again relied on after the previous manager left for another club in the summer of 2023.

So intense was the ferocity of Desmond's takedown, the astonishing return of the former boss was practically an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after much of his recent life was given over to an unending series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his past successes at the team, O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.

For now - and maybe for a while. Considering things he has said recently, he has been keen to get a new position. He'll view this role as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the place where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.

Would he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. Celtic could possibly make a call to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be parked because the biggest shocking development was the brutal manner the shareholder wrote of Rodgers.

It was a forceful attempt at defamation, a labeling of him as untrustful, a perpetrator of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "One individual's wish for self-preservation at the expense of everyone else," stated he.

For somebody who values decorum and sets high importance in business being conducted with confidentiality, if not outright privacy, this was another example of how abnormal things have grown at the club.

The major figure, the club's most powerful presence, moves in the margins. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the major decisions he wants without having the responsibility of justifying them in any public forum.

He never attend club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, his son, in his place. He seldom, if ever, does interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And still, he's reluctant to speak out.

He has been known on an rare moment to support the organization with private missives to media organisations, but no statement is heard in public.

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

The directive from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reading his invective, line by line, one must question why he allow it to get such a critical point?

If the manager is culpable of all of the accusations that Desmond is alleging he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why had been the coach not dismissed?

Desmond has accused him of spinning things in public that were inconsistent with reality.

He claims Rodgers' 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 abuse directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and improper."

Such an remarkable charge, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.

His Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Again

Looking back to better days, they were close, the two men. Rodgers praised the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

This was Desmond who drew the criticism when his comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most divisive appointment, the return of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the shameless one, who left them in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had Rodgers' back. Gradually, Rodgers employed the persuasion, delivered the wins and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters became a love-in again.

It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with Celtic's operational approach, though.

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers publicly commented about the sluggish way Celtic went about their transfer business, the interminable waiting for targets to be landed, then missed, as was frequently the case as far as he was believed.

Time and again he spoke about the necessity for what he termed "agility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.

Even when the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the £11m Arne Engels, the costly another player and the significant Auston Trusty - all of whom have cut it so far, with one since having departed - the manager demanded more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the club and then walked away. Upon questioning about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would usually downplay it and almost reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous strategy.

Earlier this year there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a insider close to the club. It claimed that the manager was harming the team with his open criticisms and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.

He didn't want to be present and he was engineering his exit, this was the implication of the article.

Supporters were enraged. They now saw him as similar to a martyr who might be carried out on his honor because his board members did not support his plans to bring triumph.

This disclosure was damaging, naturally, and it was meant to hurt him, which it did. He called for an inquiry and for the guilty person to be removed. Whether there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

By then it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes