John Barnes bemoans Celtic barriers that still irks him to this day

John Barnes has opened up on his time at Celtic and revealed why it still irks him to this day…

The Liverpool and England icon managed the Hoops in the 1999/2000 season, before he was relieved of his duties, following an awful Scottish Cup shock against Inverness Caley Thistle at Celtic Park.

That result was enough to see the club to decide to part ways with the novice head coach and then precipitated the arrival of Martin O’Neill, which saw the club go on to enjoy it’s most successful spell since the Jock Stein-era with the Lisbon Lions.

For Barnes though, he still feels to this day that the perception of his overall time at Paradise has been unfairly judged. The man who had been brought in to replace Dr Jo Venglos in 1999 said that his time in Scottish football came to an abrupt end due to media and player influence dictating fan opinion on his time there.

Speaking on The Jeff Stelling Show, Barnes said of his time at Celtic: “Interestingly, if I tell you that my record at Celtic is better than Steven Gerrard’s record at Rangers, a 66% win percentage at Celtic. But of course, when you’re managing Celtic, if you finish second and Rangers win the league, you’re a failure.

“And what had happened at Celtic was the disharmony and disunity at Celtic Football Club at that time. Rangers were spending a lot of money, whereas Celtic wasn’t,” Barnes stated in a strong defence of his record at Parkhead, during that ill-fated spell back in the late nineties.

“If you look at the previous owners who were there at the time, they had a lot of players on contracts that they weren’t happy with. So when I got there, they had them on contracts and the players were unhappy. We won 12 of the first 13 matches and they were still unhappy because of the politics around it,” Barnes noted.

“And of course, from the start, as I said, even winning 12 of the first 13 matches, from the second, third, fourth match… I was being given a hard time by the press.

“I didn’t have a relationship with Celtic. You had a lot of Celtic players, names I don’t have to mention, who were very powerful in the press with their friends who were not happy. And as I said, 12 of the first 13 matches, nobody wanted them.

“We were four points behind Rangers and I knew it wasn’t going to work because there was just so much unhappiness at the club at that particular time. And I wasn’t a big-name manager to be able to handle that.

“So I remember even saying to my ex-wife now, but a wife at the time, after the first five games don’t come up. I’m not going to be here long,” Barnes said.

“I lived in a flat, but I didn’t move the family up because I knew that it wasn’t going to last because I thought, well, if we are four points behind Rangers and I’m going through this abuse from the media and from the fans because the media are very powerful, then I thought, ‘Well, if I go through a sticky patch here, I’m finished,” Barnes admitted in a stark confession.

Paul Gillespie

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