How irretrievable breakdown led to savage separation for Rodgers & Celtic

Fifteen minutes after Celtic issued the news of Brendan Rodgers ‘ shock resignation via a perfunctory five-paragraph, 134-word statement, the howitzer landed, courtesy of Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent fury.

Major shareholder Desmond eviscerated his old chum in 551 words.

When Rangers needed to be put back in a box when they were growing up, he persuaded him to join the organization. And the man he again turned to after Ange Postecoglou left for Tottenham in the summer of 2023.

Desmond’s takedown was so fierce that Martin O’Neill’s jaw-dropping comeback was almost forgotten.

O’Neill is back in the dugout after 20 years away from the club and after much of his earlier life was spent doing unending public speaking engagements and playing all of his old songs at Celtic.

For now – and maybe for a while. O’Neill has been eager to find a job elsewhere, based on recent statements he made. He’ll view this as the greatest gift from the Celtic Gods, a return to the place of his glories and acclaim.

O’Neill’s reappearance, which is as bizarre as it is, can be parked because of the biggest Wow! moment was the brutal way Desmond wrote of Rodgers.

It was a full-blooded assassination attempt, Rodgers being called untrustworthy, a delusionist, a propagandist, a dissident, misleading, and unacceptable. Desmond wrote, “One person’s desire for self-preservation at the expense of others.”

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

The club’s most powerful player, Desmond, maneuvers in the shadows. The absentee totem, the one who has the authority to make any significant calls he pleases without having to defend them in any public forum.

He does not attend club AGMs, sending his son, Ross, instead. He does interviews about Celtic hardly ever if they aren’t hagiographic in tone. Even so, he communicates slowly.

He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with private missives to media organisations, but nothing is heard in public.

It is exactly as he desired it to be. And that’s exactly what he did on Monday when he went completely thermonuclear with Rodgers.

The directive from the club is that Rodgers resigned, but reading Desmond’s invective, line by line, you have to wonder why did he allow it to get this far down the line?

If Rodgers is held accountable for everything Desmond claims he is, why wasn’t the manager fired?

Desmond has accused him of fabricating information in a false narrative in public.

He says his words “have contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the executive team and the board. Some of the abuse directed at them and their families was completely unjustifiable and unacceptable.

They were close, Dermot and Brendan, to bring things back to happier times. Rodgers praised Desmond at every turn and thanked him at every opportunity. Brendan deferred to Dermot and, really, to nobody else.

When Rodgers’ returned, post-Postecoglou, Desmond was the subject of the greatest stir.

The return of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have put it, the return of the shameless one who had abandoned them for Leicester was the most divisive appointment.

Desmond had Rodgers ‘ back. Rodgers eventually accepted the win and trophies, and a tense truce with the fans led to a return to love-in.

Rodgers’ ambition and Celtic’s business model were always going to have a moment, though.

It happened in his first incarnation and it happened again, with bells on, over the last year. Rodgers openly discussed the slow manner in which Celtic handled their transfer business, the never-ending waiting period for targets to be landed before being unlanded, as he had done too frequently.

He has repeatedly emphasized the importance of what he has called “agility” in the market. The fans agreed with him.

Rodgers pushed for more and more and frequently did it in public when the club spent record amounts of money on the £11 million Arne Engels, the £9 million Adam Idah, and the £6 million Auston Trusty, none of whom had already cut it with Idah leaving.

He left the club after planting a bomb about the lack of cohesion. When asked about his comments at his next news conference he would usually downplay it and almost contradict what he said.

Lack of cohesion, perhaps? He would say that everyone is in alignment, not just one. It looked like Rodgers was playing a dangerous game.

A newspaper ran a story about a source close to the club a few months ago. Rodgers’ public outbursts were alleged to be damaging Celtic, and that his real motivation was managing his exit plan.

Fans now saw him as a martyr who might be put to death on his shield because his sponsors wouldn’t support his vision’s success.

Of course, the leak was poisonous, and Rodgers got hurt as a result. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. We never learned more about a probe if it existed.

Rodgers clearly was losing the support of those who were in charge at the time.

The regular gripes about transfers were followed by a desperate beginning to the season. A sluggish Champions League exit, subpar domestic performances, and an airborne stench of decay.

The blame was changed. When Celtic lost to Dundee a few weeks back he said: “You can’t be given the keys to a Honda Civic and drive it like a Ferrari”.

It would have been contentious enough if Rodgers had predicted that after a significant Champions League defeat, but it was mortifying after a defeat to Dundee, which had only had the resources of Celtic. He later made a second opinion.

The fans, increasingly growing weary of excuses, didn’t buy it, but if it was a battle between Rodgers and the Celtic board then, in their eyes, Rodgers was still an emphatic winner.

As usual, Desmond’s voice was unknown, but his business life’s tale reveals that he doesn’t appreciate his people’s rogue behavior. That Desmond whiskers would have to start dancing in Rodgers’ comment, Rodgers’ comment.

Monday, in the wake of a loss to Hearts that put Celtic eight points behind Derek McInnes ‘ team, was the endgame. When Desmond opened his laptop, He unburdened himself, causing him to feel suicidal, and its intensity was almost startling.

Unquestionably, elements of what Rodgers did and said was self-serving. Desmond categorically refutes Desmond’s suggestion that he had implied that some players were signing without his consent.

He claimed as recently as Sunday that he was no longer more than a fixer because he was already in the present, but the trust had obviously vanished. In both directions.

The wisest course of action is divorce. It was a permanent breakdown. Unseemly and embarrassing.

Rodgers made some good points, though, and the supporters were completely unmoved from him in other areas despite their slight animosity toward him in the wake of recent performances.

Some will view him as a victim, a sacrifice-giving lamb, a brave member who spoke out about the issues the club faced and was ultimately forced to leave. Silenced and humiliated by Desmond.

Although it has merit, both parties were involved in this breakup.