Merely a quarter of an hour after Celtic released the announcement of their manager's shock departure via a perfunctory short statement, the howitzer arrived, courtesy of the major shareholder, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.
Through 551-words, key investor Desmond eviscerated his former ally.
The man he convinced to come to the team when their rivals were gaining ground in 2016 and required being in their place. And the figure he again relied on after Ange Postecoglou departed to another club in the summer of 2023.
Such was the ferocity of his critique, the jaw-dropping comeback of the former boss was practically an secondary note.
Twenty years after his exit from the organization, and after much of his recent life was given over to an continuous series of appearances and the performance of all his past successes at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is back in the manager's seat.
Currently - and maybe for a time. Based on comments he has expressed lately, O'Neill has been keen to get a new position. He'll see this one as the perfect opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a homecoming to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and praise.
Will he relinquish it readily? It seems unlikely. Celtic could possibly reach out to contact Postecoglou, but the new appointment will act as a soothing presence for the moment.
All-out Attempt at Reputation Destruction'
O'Neill's reappearance - as surreal as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest 'wow!' development was the brutal way the shareholder wrote of the former manager.
This constituted a full-blooded attempt at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a perpetrator of untruths, a spreader of misinformation; disruptive, deceptive and unjustifiable. "One individual's desire for self-preservation at the expense of others," wrote Desmond.
For a person who prizes decorum and places great store in business being conducted with discretion, if not complete privacy, this was another illustration of how unusual things have grown at the club.
Desmond, the organization's dominant presence, operates in the margins. The absentee totem, the one with the authority to make all the important calls he pleases without having the obligation of explaining them in any public forum.
He never participate in club annual meetings, sending his offspring, his son, in his place. He rarely, if ever, gives interviews about the team unless they're hagiographic in nature. And even then, he's slow to communicate.
There have been instances on an rare moment to support the club with private missives to news outlets, but no statement is made in public.
This is precisely how he's wanted it to be. And that's just what he went against when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on that day.
The directive from the team is that he stepped down, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, one must question why he allow it to get this far down the line?
Assuming Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it's fair to ask why had been the manager not removed?
Desmond has charged him of spinning information in open forums that were inconsistent with reality.
He claims his words "played a part to a toxic environment around the team and fuelled hostility towards members of the management and the board. Some of the criticism aimed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."
What an extraordinary allegation, that is. Lawyers might be mobilising as we discuss.
His Aspirations Clashed with Celtic's Strategy Again
Looking back to better days, they were tight, Dermot and Brendan. Rodgers lauded Desmond at all opportunities, thanked him whenever possible. Rodgers deferred to Dermot and, truly, to nobody else.
This was the figure who took the criticism when Rodgers' returned occurred, after the previous manager.
This marked the most controversial appointment, the reappearance of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the arrival of the unapologetic figure, who left them in the lurch for Leicester.
The shareholder had Rodgers' support. Over time, Rodgers turned on the charm, achieved the victories and the trophies, and an uneasy truce with the supporters turned into a love-in again.
It was inevitable - always - going to be a point when Rodgers' goals came in contact with the club's operational approach, however.
This occurred in his first incarnation and it happened again, with bells on, recently. He publicly commented about the slow process Celtic went about their player acquisitions, the endless delay for targets to be secured, then not landed, as was too often the case as far as he was concerned.
Repeatedly he stated about the need for what he called "flexibility" in the transfer window. Supporters agreed with him.
Despite the organization spent record amounts of funds in a twelve-month period on the expensive Arne Engels, the costly another player and the £6m Auston Trusty - all of whom have performed well to date, with Idah since having left - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in public.
He set a bomb about a lack of cohesion inside the team and then distanced himself. When asked about his remarks at his subsequent news conference he would usually downplay it and nearly contradict what he said.
Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd say. It appeared like he was playing a risky game.
A few months back there was a report in a publication that allegedly came from a source close to the organization. It said that the manager was harming the team with his public outbursts and that his true aim was orchestrating his exit strategy.
He didn't want to be present and he was engineering his way out, this was the tone of the story.
Supporters were angered. They now saw him as akin to a sacrificial figure who might be carried out on his honor because his board members wouldn't support his vision to bring success.
This disclosure was poisonous, naturally, and it was intended to harm Rodgers, which it did. He demanded for an investigation and for the responsible individual to be dismissed. If there was a probe then we learned no more about it.
At that point it was clear Rodgers was shedding the backing of the individuals in charge.
The frequent {gripes
