The fans were enraged, They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn’t back his vision to bring success.
The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.
At that point it was plain Rodgers was losing the support of the people above him.
The regular gripes about transfers were followed by a desperate beginning to the season. A feeble exit from the Champions League, flat domestic performances, a stench of decay in the air.
Blame was shifted. 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.”
If Rodgers had said that after losing a big Champions League game then it would have been contentious enough, but after a loss to Dundee – with a tiny fraction of Celtic’s resources – it was mortifying. Later, he doubled-down on it.
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.
Nothing was heard from Desmond, as usual, but the story of his business life tells us he doesn’t appreciate his people going rogue. Rodgers comment by Rodgers comment, those Desmond whiskers would have to started to dance.
Monday, in the wake of a loss to Hearts that put Celtic eight points behind Derek McInnes’ team, was the endgame. Desmond opened his laptop. Sudden, unsparing and almost startling in its intensity, he unburdened himself.
Unquestionably, elements of what Rodgers did and said was self-serving. He dropped hints that some players were being signed without his full approval, something that Desmond categorically denies.
He said as recently as Sunday that he was never more determined to fix things as he was right in the here and now, but the trust had obviously gone. In both directions.
A divorce is the wisest action. This was an irretrievable breakdown. Unseemly and embarrassing.
Rodgers made good points, though, and the supporters, though turning on him slightly in the wake of recent performances, were wholly behind him in other areas.
Some will see him now as a victim, a sacrificial lamb, a man who had the bravery to speak up about the problems the club faced and who got driven out because of it. Silenced and humiliated by Desmond.
It’s an interpretation with merit, but they were two parties involved in this break-up.
Through his caustic words, Desmond has made it a vicious separation. We’ll get Rodgers’s riposte in time, but his era is over now. No coming back this time, not even a chance of a proper farewell. A sad, but inevitable conclusion.
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