The Way Unrecoverable Breakdown Led to a Brutal Separation for Rodgers & Celtic

Merely fifteen minutes after the club issued the announcement of Brendan Rodgers' shock departure via a perfunctory short communication, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with clear signs in obvious fury.

In an extensive statement, key investor Dermot Desmond savaged his former ally.

The man he convinced to join the club when Rangers were gaining ground in that period and needed putting back in a box. Plus the figure he again turned to after the previous manager departed to another club in the recent offseason.

Such was the ferocity of his critique, the astonishing comeback of the former boss was almost an secondary note.

Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after much of his latter years was given over to an continuous series of public speaking engagements and the performance of all his old hits at the team, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.

For now - and perhaps for a time. Considering comments he has expressed recently, he has been eager to secure another job. He will see this role as the ultimate opportunity, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the environment where he experienced such glory and adulation.

Will he relinquish it readily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to sound out their ex-manager, but the new appointment will serve as a balm for the time being.

All-out Effort at Character Assassination

The new manager's return - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant shocking development was the brutal manner Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded attempt at character assassination, a labeling of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's wish for self-preservation at the cost of others," wrote he.

For a person who prizes decorum and places great store in dealings being done with discretion, if not outright secrecy, this was another illustration of how abnormal things have become at Celtic.

The major figure, the club's dominant figure, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the individual with the authority to make all the important calls he wants without having the obligation of justifying them in any open setting.

He does not attend club AGMs, dispatching his son, Ross, in his place. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in tone. And still, he's reluctant to communicate.

There have been instances on an rare moment to support the club with confidential messages to news outlets, but nothing is heard in the open.

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

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

If Rodgers is guilty of all of the things that the shareholder is alleging he's guilty of, then it's fair to inquire why was the manager not dismissed?

He has accused him of spinning information in public that did not tally with the facts.

He says Rodgers' statements "played a part to a toxic environment around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the executive team and the board. Some of the criticism directed at them, and at their loved ones, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."

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

His Ambition Clashed with the Club's Model Again

To return to better days, they were tight, the two men. Rodgers lauded Desmond at every turn, thanked him whenever possible. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, truly, to no one other.

This was Desmond who drew the heat when Rodgers' comeback happened, post-Postecoglou.

This marked the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the returning hero for some supporters or, as other supporters would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.

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

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

It happened in his initial tenure and it transpired once more, with added intensity, recently. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish process the team went about their transfer business, the endless delay for prospects to be secured, then not landed, as was frequently the case as far as he was concerned.

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

Even when the club spent unprecedented sums of money in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the significant Auston Trusty - none of whom have performed well so far, with one already having departed - Rodgers demanded increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.

He planted a controversy about a lack of cohesion within the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would typically downplay it and nearly reverse what he stated.

Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It looked like he was playing a risky strategy.

A few months back there was a story in a publication that purportedly originated from a source associated with the club. It said that the manager 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 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 wouldn't support his plans to bring triumph.

The leak was damaging, of course, and it was intended to harm him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual 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 individuals in charge.

The frequent {gripes