| 1999 I 2000 I John Barnes I Kenny Dalglish I Allan MacDonald I Inverness Caledonian Thistle Game |
Celtic give Barnes the sack for cup humiliation
The Scotsman 11/02/2000
NEIL McLEMAN
John Barnes paid the price for the worst result in Celtic's history yesterday when he was sacked as coach just seven months into his three-year contract.
Allan MacDonald, Celtic's Chief Executive, had described as "totally unacceptable" the 3-1 home defeat in the Scottish Cup against Inverness Caledonian Thistle, before summoning Kenny Dalglish to Celtic Park for crisis talks which resulted in Barnes's departure.
Dalglish, the Director of Football Operations, was instrumental in the controversial appointment last summer of Barnes, who had no previous managerial experience.
Dalglish, a Celtic hero as a player and a former manager of Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle, has assumed temporary control of the first team and will be in charge when Celtic take on Dundee tomorrow in the Premier League.
Dalglish expressed great regret that the gamble on Barnes had not paid off and admitted that he had been prepared to leave with Barnes if the board had asked him to.
"If anyone had felt it was in the best interests for me to go I would have done that," said Dalglish, "but fortunately for myself and, hopefully in the future, fortunately for this club, Kenny Dalglish remains here."
Barnes is the shortest-serving Celtic manager have had, but he had spent more on players than his predecessors, paying almost 15 million for Eyal Berkovic, Rafael Scheidt, Stilian Petrov and Olivier Tebily.
After a rocky spell towards the end of last year, results improved for Celtic and six weeks ago he was named manager of the month. However, the cup defeat against Inverness was preceded last Saturday by a 3-2 home defeat against Hearts, leaving Celtic trailing Rangers, the league leaders, by ten points.
Dalglish said:
"John Barnes is an admirable fellow and somebody I think will go on in later years to establish himself as someone who will be very successful in the coaching and managing of football clubs.
"He has all the attributes necessary to do that – unfortunately it won't be at Celtic. It gives me no pleasure in any way shape or form to be sitting here and making this announcement.
"I don't find myself too comfortable because at the end of the day I'm responsible for the footballing operation and as part of that I feel as much responsible as anyone else if things don't go smoothly."
Dalglish said Celtic would not be rushed into appointing a hasty replacement for Barnes, but would prefer to fill the position as quickly as possible
"For the moment we will be working hard to try and improve things at the club," he said. "I do concede the time I've spent in other areas has detracted from the time I could have spent with the first team."
Barnes's assistant, Eric Black, has also been sacked, while another assistant, Terry McDermott, has left Celtic by mutual agreement.
Scores of fans outside Celtic Park were handed copies of the statement telling of Barnes's departure. Most said they thought it was the right decision for the manager to go.
After winning only three trophies in the past decade – the championship and League Cup in 1997-98 and the Scottish Cup in 1995 – Celtic's directors find themselves looking again for a manager who can produce a team capable of ending the domination of Rangers, who are closing in on a 12th league title in 11 seasons. The appointment will be the seventh manager in seven years at Celtic Park, in contrast to the total of four managers employed during the club's first 90 years.
Situation critical at Celtic
The Scotsman 11/02/2000
GLENN GIBBONS
ON THE basis that every wrong turning leads to somewhere the traveller has no wish to be, Celtic will have to proceed along their present route with extreme caution.
The mass sackings at Parkhead yesterday, with head coach John Barnes and his assistants Eric Black and Terry McDermott the victims, represented the latest loss of direction by a club that has been trying for more than a decade to find the path that will take them straight to the summit of Scottish football.
They came across it and reached the peak in Wim Jansen's year of triumph in 1997-98, but quickly strayed, stumbled and fell, landing back in the woods. Now they appear to be so densely thicketed that they cannot see daylight.
Kenny Dalglish, the director of football operations, is to take charge of the first team, assisted for the time being by coach Kenny McDowall, but Dalglish himself made it clear yesterday that he was taking the job only until a suitable replacement for Barnes is found. Identifying and appointing a manager who will achieve the required success rate is the most difficult problem any chief executive of that tortured club will have to face. If the present incumbent, Allan MacDonald, has learned anything from the ill-fated recruitment of Barnes, it is that, in this singularly demanding position, pedigree is more important than potential.
It seemed at the time of Barnes's appointment last summer that everybody in the country except MacDonald and Dalglish, his sponsors, had serious misgivings about the former Liverpool and England player's readiness for what has become incontestably the most intense position in British football.
It was not as if it was new, experimental and exciting … well, it may have been to MacDonald, himself a newcomer to football club management, but not to Parkhead watchers who had seen a similar exercise with Liam Brady come to a predictable, wretched conclusion in 1993.
Celtic Park has become a place for grizzled achievers who have shown they not only understand and can help end the club's problems, but will not buckle under the strain of trying. Bizarrely, the most plausible manager immediately available to them is already there. That is Dalglish himself.
The new, temporary head coach wore his director of football operations hat yesterday with a vicious, but not unwarranted, attack on players he perceived as basically gutless and unwilling to commit themselves fully to what is dangerously close to having the appearance of a lost cause.
"We need players here who will wear the jersey with pride," said Dalglish. "If they don't want to wear it, they needn't bother coming to work. Players can make mistakes and have poor performances and results and that's acceptable, but if there is not 100 per cent commitment, they'll be in trouble.
"I don't think our club or our supporters deserve people like that. If there are any here like that, they won't be here long."
But the question has to be asked if Dalglish himself has the stomach for the manager's job, given his bad experiences in the later stages of his time at Blackburn and his short and largely uneasy stay at Newcastle. He has said often enough himself that the daily involvement on the training field as a hands-on coach is no longer appealing and his words as he prepared yesterday to stand in for the departed Barnes suggested that nothing had caused a change of heart.
"I have to take charge of the first team until a replacement can be found," said Dalglish. "That will be a joint venture between myself and the board."
There is an unambiguous implication here that he regards the position as temporary and that he is unlikely even to consider applying himself to the task long enough to restore the team's fortunes. In which case Dalglish, MacDonald and the board will again have to confront the chore of finding the right manager.
Candidates who are at once credible, willing takers and soon to become available seem about as plentiful as snowballs in Hell. But Celtic themselves have already demonstrated that nuggets can be found some distance from the mother lode. Jansen was a prime example, unthought of by the legions of media commentators who speculated on an entire truckload of contenders in 1997. The Dutchman had not been in the mainstream, as it were, and his profile was as low as a snake's belly.
Nor was anyone with a guess able to predict the subsequent appointments of Jozef Venglos and John Barnes. All 
MacDonald repeated his desire yesterday when he said:
"It is a personal regret that this decision [to sack Barnes and the others] has been taken, but it is in the best interests of Celtic Football Club. The first team is the mainstay of our organisation and the head coach is responsible for all aspects of it.
"But, in appointing a new manager, we will not sacrifice quality for speed. In the long term, football management stability remains the goal of the club, but that can only be achieved with success on the field of play."
Celtic's record in this direction since the departure of Jock Stein in 1978 has been bewildering enough to make supporters' heads swim. Stein himself was only the fourth manager in the club's then 90-year history. Since his leaving in unsavoury circumstances, there have been another eight -Billy McNeill (twice), David Hay, Brady, Lou Macari, Tommy Burns, Jansen, Venglos and Barnes. Seven of them – all except Hay – have been and gone in the last ten years. The fact that such a numerous and diverse group could have been appointed by several different regimes is an indicator of the difficulties in predicting who will make a great manager.
One of the problems facing MacDonald and Dalglish is the old, abundant supply of former Celtic players with managerial potential has all but dried up. Davie Moyes at Preston is the only one making an impression.
In any case, Jansen, Walter Smith and Dick Advocaat have demonstrated that it is not necessary to be a former Old Firm player to understand and cope with the demands. An active and tormented supporter throughout the last ten years of uncertainty, MacDonald needs no lessons in the urgency of finding the right person. He has suffered along with thousands of others.
Now he has the responsibility. His first stab missed the target by a considerable margin.