JOHN BARNES was named as Celtic manager on 10th June 1999 but only lasted 9 months. He was sacked after crashing out the Scottish Cup after a 3-1 defeat at home to Inverness Caledonian Thistle – this result is said to be one of the worst cup results in Celtic’s history.
Many times the Liverpool Winger had alluded to the race being a factor of his sacking, but speaking to the Guardian he has backed down on this claim.
“I prefer to talk about it generally because my time at Celtic had nothing to do with race. It had to do with the fact that the English don’t know much about Scottish football.”
However, he goes on to make a claim his percentage of wins puts him high up the Celtic manager rankings;
“I was a first-time manager and the perception, which is media indoctrination, is that my time was a disaster. On a 65% win rate? After Jock Stein I had the largest percentage of wins than any other first-time manager at Celtic … in the history of Celtic managers, as far as win percentages goes, I’m the fourth or fifth best manager. But I had problems from the beginning and knew it wouldn’t last.”
The claim is simply laughable, the Celtic support can assure that John Barnes was not a good manager. John had his share of bad luck – Henrik Larsson’s leg break being the catalyst for a dismal season.
John has been very vocal about the anti-racism message and believes football, in general, need to do more to eradicate this blight on our game and wider society.
Barnes was a rookie manager in a huge job. The wheels fell off after the honeymoon was over. The experiment didn’t work. Forget about it John, we have.