The Way Unrecoverable Breakdown Resulted in a Savage Separation for Rodgers & Celtic FC

Just a quarter of an hour following the club issued the news of their manager's shock departure via a brief five-paragraph statement, the bombshell arrived, from the major shareholder, with clear signs in apparent anger.

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

This individual he persuaded to come to the club when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. Plus the man he once more relied on after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the recent offseason.

So intense was the severity of his takedown, the astonishing comeback of Martin O'Neill was almost an after-thought.

Two decades after his departure from the organization, and after much of his recent life was given over to an unending series of appearances and the performance of all his past successes at the team, Martin O'Neill is back in the dugout.

Currently - and perhaps for a while. Based on comments he has expressed recently, O'Neill has been keen to get another job. He will view this one as the perfect chance, a present from the Celtic Gods, a homecoming to the place where he experienced such success 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 the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.

'Full-blooded Attempt at Character Assassination

O'Neill's reappearance - however strange as it is - can be set aside because the most significant shocking moment was the brutal way Desmond described the former manager.

This constituted a forceful attempt at character assassination, a branding of Rodgers as deceitful, a source of untruths, a disseminator of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.

For a person who prizes decorum and sets high importance in business being done with discretion, if not outright privacy, this was a further example of how unusual things have grown at Celtic.

The major figure, the organization's dominant figure, operates in the background. The absentee totem, the individual with the power to take all the important decisions he wants without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.

He does not attend team AGMs, sending his offspring, his son, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives media talks about the team unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's slow to speak out.

There have been instances on an rare moment to defend the organization with private messages to media organisations, but no statement is made in public.

This is precisely how he's preferred it to be. And that's exactly what he contradicted when launching all-out attack on Rodgers on Monday.

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

If Rodgers is guilty of every one of the things that the shareholder is claiming he's responsible for, then it is reasonable to ask why was the manager not removed?

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

He says Rodgers' words "played a part to a hostile atmosphere around the team and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the board. A portion of the abuse aimed at them, and at their loved ones, has been completely unjustified and unacceptable."

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

His Ambition Clashed with Celtic's Model Again

Looking back to better days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised the shareholder at all opportunities, expressed gratitude to him whenever possible. Brendan respected Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.

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

It was the most divisive hiring, the return of the returning hero for some supporters or, as some other supporters would have put it, the arrival of the shameless one, who departed in the difficulty for another club.

The shareholder had his back. Over time, the manager turned on the charm, delivered the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the supporters turned into a affectionate relationship once more.

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

This occurred in his first incarnation and it transpired again, with bells on, recently. Rodgers publicly commented about the slow process the team conducted their transfer business, the endless delay for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.

Repeatedly he stated about the necessity for what he termed "agility" in the transfer window. The fans agreed with him.

Despite the club spent unprecedented sums of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive one signing, the costly Adam Idah and the significant further acquisition - all of whom have cut it to date, with Idah since having departed - Rodgers pushed for more and more and, oftentimes, he did it in public.

He set a bomb about a internal disunity inside the team and then distanced himself. Upon questioning about his comments at his subsequent news conference he would usually downplay it and nearly contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion? No, no, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It looked like Rodgers was engaging in a dangerous game.

Earlier this year there was a story in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a insider associated with the club. It said that Rodgers was harming Celtic with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his departure plan.

He desired not to be there and he was arranging his exit, that was the tone of the story.

Supporters were angered. They then saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn't back his plans to bring success.

This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was meant to harm him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. Whether there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.

By then it was clear the manager was shedding the backing of the people above him.

The frequent {gripes