Brendan Rodgers has been described as “misleading” and having helped create a “toxic atmosphere” at Celtic after the manager resigned from his position at the club.
Rodgers has been replaced on an interim basis by the club’s former manager Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney.
Dermot Desmond, the largest individual shareholder of Celtic, said in a statement that Rodgers’ “words and actions since then (the summer transfer window) have been divisive, misleading, and self-serving” which he says “contributed to a toxic atmosphere around the club and fuelled hostility towards members of the executive team and the board”.
Desmond added: “What has failed recently was not due to our structure or model, but to one individual’s desire for self-preservation at the expense of others.”
Rodgers’ exit comes a day after the Scottish champions fell to a 3-1 defeat at Hearts, a result which opened up an eight-point lead at the top of the Scottish Premiership for the Edinburgh side.
It brings an end to his second stint in charge of Celtic, having also managed the Scottish club between 2016 and February 2019 — when he departed to take charge of Leicester City.
O’Neill formerly managed Celtic between 2000 and 2005, winning seven trophies including three league titles and reaching the UEFA Cup final in 2003, in which they lost to Jose Mourinho’s Porto.
O’Neill, 73, will be taking interim charge of Celtic alongside 42-year-old Maloney, the former Hibernian and Wigan Athletic manager, who played 215 times across two spells as a player at the Glasgow side.
Club Statement.
— Celtic Football Club (@CelticFC) October 27, 2025
Rodgers’ exit follows weeks after Russell Martin was sacked by Celtic’s Glasgow rivals Rangers, who have subsequently appointed Danny Rohl.
Outside of Celtic and Rangers, the last Scottish team to win the nation’s top division was Aberdeen, manager by Sir Alex Ferguson, in 1984-85. Hearts currently are eight points clear of Celtic at the top of the standings, with Rangers a further five points further back in fifth.
Rodgers, 52, won the league title with Celtic in each of his four full seasons in charge, but results have declined this season. Celtic won the Scottish title and League Cup in 2024-25, but lost the Scottish Cup final on penalties to Aberdeen. They progressed to the play-off round of the Champions League knock-out phase, where they lost 3-2 on aggregate to Bayern Munich.
Celtic missed out on this season’s Champions League league phase format, having been eliminated in the play-off round by Kairat Almaty of Kazakhstan.
The Northern Irishman returned to Celtic in the summer of 2023 following a four-year stint at Leicester, where he won the FA Cup and Community Shield in 2021 and guided the club to successive top-five Premier League finishes.
Having begun his managerial career in charge of Watford and Reading in the Championship, Rodgers oversaw Swansea City’s promotion to the Premier League in 2011.
An 11th-place finish in the top flight preceded his appointment at Liverpool, where he did not win a major trophy but took the club to within two points of champions Manchester City in 2013-14.
O’Neill — whose managerial career includes spells at Wycombe Wanderers, Leicester City, Aston Villa, Sunderland, Nottingham Forest and the Republic of Ireland — was the most successful Celtic manager since Jock Stein.
In five seasons in Glasgow, he won three Scottish titles, three Scottish Cups and a League Cup. The two titles he missed out on were by a margin of one point and by one goal.
His win rate of 75.5 per cent is the highest of any Celtic manager in the club’s history.