John Barnes has pointed to having a better win percentage at Celtic than Steven Gerrard at Rangers.
Widely regarded as one of the club’s worst-ever managers, Barnes was sacked just six months into his first season in Glasgow.
Gerrard, on the other hand, was given the patience of two seasons in which Celtic won the treble before finally winning his first (and only) trophy at Ibrox in 2021.
The narrative around the two couldn’t be more different, so if nothing else, Barnes’ point is amusing.
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John Barnes on his Celtic spell: ‘I knew it wasn’t going to work’
Speaking to Jeff Stelling Barnes said: “Interestingly, when you look at my record at Celtic…
“If I was to tell you that my record at Celtic is better than Steven Gerrard’s at Rangers, out of win percentage…
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“66% win percentage at Celtic, 65.8%. But of course, when you’re managing Celtic – at that particular time, not so much now – 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.
“If you remember, Rangers were spending a lot of money whereas Celtic wasn’t. If you look at the previous owners who were there at that time, they had a lot of players on contracts that they weren’t happy with.
“So when I got there, and [the players] thought ‘Dalglish and Barnes are here now, they’re going to spend lots of money’… and they weren’t.
“So we won 12 of the first 13 matches, and they were still unhappy because of the politics around it.
“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, whose 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… or we’d won 11, won one, lost one. We were four points behind Rangers, and I knew it wasn’t going to work.”
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Celtic’s 1999-2000 season
Dalglish and Barnes were initially billed as the ‘dream team’ management duo, but the season turned out to be a nightmare.
A seismic moment in the campaign was undoubtedly Henrik Larsson’s horror leg-break in October, ruling him out for the remainder of the campaign.
This made Mark Viduka the main man of the season, but his refusal to play the second half of the Inverness defeat ended up being a contributing factor to Barnes’ sacking.
In the immediate aftermath of the season, Celtic appointed Martin O’Neill for the first time. It is quite incredible that he is once again leading the Celts 26 years later.
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