Merely fifteen minutes after Celtic issued the announcement of their manager's shock departure via a brief five-paragraph communication, the howitzer arrived, from Dermot Desmond, with whiskers twitching in apparent anger.
In an extensive statement, major shareholder Dermot Desmond eviscerated his old chum.
The man he convinced to come to the club when their rivals were getting uppity in that period and required being back in a box. And the man he once more turned to after the previous manager left for another club in the recent offseason.
So intense was the ferocity of his takedown, the jaw-dropping return of the former boss was almost an secondary note.
Twenty years after his exit from the club, and after much of his latter years was dedicated to an unending circuit of appearances and the performance of all his old hits at Celtic, Martin O'Neill is returned in the dugout.
For now - and perhaps for a time. Based on comments he has said recently, he has been eager to get another job. He will view this role as the ultimate opportunity, a gift from the club's legacy, a return to the environment where he enjoyed such glory and adulation.
Will he give it up easily? You wouldn't have thought so. The club might well reach out to contact Postecoglou, but O'Neill will act as a balm for the moment.
All-out Effort at Character Assassination
The new manager's return - however strange as it may be - can be set aside because the biggest shocking development was the harsh way Desmond wrote of the former manager.
It was a full-blooded endeavor at defamation, a branding of him as deceitful, a source of falsehoods, a spreader of falsehoods; divisive, misleading and unacceptable. "A single person's desire for self-interest at the expense of everyone else," stated Desmond.
For somebody who prizes propriety and sets high importance in business being conducted with discretion, if not complete privacy, here was a further illustration of how abnormal things have grown at the club.
The major figure, the organization's dominant presence, moves in the margins. The remote leader, the one with the power to make all the important decisions he pleases without having the responsibility of explaining them in any public forum.
He does not participate in club AGMs, dispatching his offspring, Ross, instead. He seldom, if ever, gives interviews about Celtic unless they're glowing in nature. And even then, he's slow to speak out.
He has been known on an occasion or two to defend the club with private messages to news outlets, but no statement is made in the open.
It's exactly how he's wanted it to remain. And it's just what he contradicted when launching full thermonuclear on Rodgers on Monday.
The directive from the club is that he resigned, but reading Desmond's invective, carefully, you have to wonder why did he allow it to reach this far down the line?
If Rodgers is culpable of all of the things that Desmond is claiming he's guilty of, then it is reasonable to inquire why had been the coach not dismissed?
Desmond has accused him of distorting things in public that did not tally with the facts.
He claims Rodgers' statements "have contributed to a hostile environment around the club and fuelled hostility towards individuals of the management and the board. A portion of the criticism directed at them, and at their families, has been entirely unjustified and unacceptable."
Such an remarkable allegation, that is. Legal representatives might be mobilising as we discuss.
'Rodgers' Aspirations Conflicted with Celtic's Strategy Again
To return to happier days, they were close, Dermot and Brendan. The manager praised the shareholder at every turn, expressed gratitude to him every chance. Rodgers respected Dermot and, really, to no one other.
It was the figure who took the heat when his returned happened, after the previous manager.
It was the most controversial hiring, the reappearance of the prodigal son for a few or, as some other Celtic fans would have described it, the return of the unapologetic figure, who departed in the lurch for Leicester.
Desmond had his support. Over time, the manager employed the charm, achieved the victories and the honors, and an fragile truce with the fans turned into a affectionate relationship again.
There was always - consistently - going to be a moment when his ambition clashed with the club's business model, though.
It happened in his initial tenure and it happened once more, with added intensity, over the last year. Rodgers spoke openly about the sluggish way the team conducted their player acquisitions, the interminable delay for targets to be landed, then missed, as was too often the situation as far as he was believed.
Repeatedly he spoke about the necessity for what he called "flexibility" in the market. Supporters agreed with him.
Even when the organization splurged record amounts of money in a calendar year on the £11m one signing, the £9m another player and the £6m further acquisition - none of whom have cut it to date, with Idah already having departed - Rodgers pushed for increased resources and, oftentimes, he expressed this in openly.
He planted a bomb about a internal disunity within the club and then walked away. When asked about his remarks at his next media briefing he would usually downplay it and nearly contradict what he stated.
Lack of cohesion? Not at all, everybody is aligned, he'd claim. It appeared like he was playing a dangerous strategy.
A few months back there was a report in a newspaper that purportedly originated from a source associated with the club. It claimed that Rodgers was damaging the team with his public outbursts and that his real motivation was managing his exit strategy.
He desired not to be there and he was engineering his exit, this was the implication of the article.
Supporters were angered. They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors did not back his plans to achieve triumph.
The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to hurt him, which it accomplished. He demanded for an inquiry and for the responsible individual to be removed. If there was a examination then we learned nothing further about it.
By then it was plain Rodgers was shedding the support of the people in charge.
The frequent {gripes
