At first, the farewell - and then the filleting.
Monday night brought two statements from Celtic Park, one from the club announcing that Brendan Rodgers had resigned, the other from major shareholder Dermot Desmond excoriating the now ex-manager in the most incendiary fashion.
There are two sides to every story - and so we wait for Rodgers' version.
In the meantime, it's worth a close examination of the precise words that came out of Celtic on Monday and how they sat with what we knew or what we thought we knew.
Celtic manager latest: 'I had 10 minutes to make up my mind' - O'Neill
