Celtic did not fire Nancy or Barnes over race. It was over their records.

It was interesting to see John Barnes appear in the news again this week to discuss his time at Celtic. Some people have accused him of being obsessed with the subject, but since ours was the only major club job he ever held, what else is he supposed to talk about when he is asked about his career after playing?

I have gone through a full range of emotions when it comes to Barnes. There was a time when I could not stand the guy and did not want to hear his name, but that had little to do with his performance as Celtic manager. It was his conduct afterwards, particularly his suggestion that his treatment at the club was somehow related to race.

Barnes eventually corrected that record in 2021 and acknowledged that his failure at Celtic had nothing to do with racism. He has also moved away from the argument that the board failed to support him, which was always difficult to sustain when you consider how much money he was allowed to spend, particularly when viewed through the prism of what Celtic managers are often given now.

His return to the headlines intrigued me because, around four months ago, I received an email from a furious Ibrox supporter who had read something I wrote about his club. He accused me of being an apologist for an institution with a racist outlook because the two shortest-serving permanent managers in Celtic’s history were black.

It was an extraordinary argument.

It reminded me of Labour supporters accusing the Conservatives of sexism when the latter have had several female leaders and Labour has had none. The comparison is not exact, of course, but the contradiction is obvious enough.

The Ibrox club has never appointed a black head coach and, if I were forced to guess, I would not be holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

That does not mean Celtic should be immune from scrutiny.

No club should be. There were shameful incidents involving racism on Scottish terraces in the 1980s, most notably the abuse directed at Mark Walters, and nobody should attempt to minimise or rewrite that history.

But across the bulk of my lifetime supporting Celtic, I have never regarded this fanbase as one defined by racial hostility. There was never any serious evidence that Barnes or Wilfried Nancy received less time because of the colour of their skin. They were dismissed because they were the two managers in Celtic’s modern history who appeared most obviously out of their depth.

That is the truth, however uncomfortable some people find it.

I still enjoy listening to Barnes discuss football because he remains an intelligent and articulate man. But nobody took a serious chance on him after Celtic, aside from his spell with the Jamaican national side. That strongly suggests the club was not wrong to dismiss him.

It is not as though Celtic allowed a managerial genius to slip through its fingers. Barnes did not leave Glasgow and prove everybody wrong. He did not rebuild his reputation elsewhere or demonstrate that his methods had been misunderstood.

Wilfried Nancy has not done so either, at least not yet.

Barnes arrived at Celtic without any previous managerial experience whatsoever. It was a mistake the club had already made with Liam Brady, and there was no good reason to repeat it.

Nancy is a more complicated case. I feel greater sympathy for him because he had achieved success in Major League Soccer and built a team capable of playing some dazzling football. There was at least a body of work behind his appointment, and I believed he deserved a fair chance to demonstrate what he could do.

In the end, it became clear that he could not implement his ideas with the squad he inherited. I am still not convinced those ideas were necessarily wrong, but there was no sign that he possessed the experience or adaptability required to make them work at Celtic.

Barnes at least appeared to understand the scale of the institution. He had spent the best years of his playing career at Liverpool, another enormous club with a global support and relentless expectations. He knew what pressure at that level looked like.

That is why I find it amusing when he attempts to defend his Celtic record by citing a 66 per cent win ratio and comparing it favourably with Steven Gerrard’s record at Ibrox.

We have spent years discussing how absurdly overrated Gerrard was in Scotland. His record compares poorly with many former Celtic managers and several former Ibrox managers too. Being better than Gerrard in one statistical category is not the ringing endorsement Barnes seems to believe it is.

Paulina is going to talk later about win percentages, so I will not labour the point. But Barnes managed Celtic for 29 matches and won 19. He likes to point out that he won 12 of his first 13, and that is not an insignificant achievement. But look more closely at what followed.

After winning 12 of the first 13, Celtic won only seven of the next 16.

The trend was not merely poor. It was heading sharply downwards. A catastrophe was unfolding in front of everyone, and supporters could see it clearly. Even many of the victories during that period were unconvincing.

We had been promised an exhilarating, all-out attacking side, but that football rarely appeared. Barnes also squandered significant money on poor signings. Until Chris Sutton arrived, the two largest transfers in Celtic’s history had both been authorised during his reign: Rafael Scheidt and Eyal Berkovic.

One became a byword for disastrous recruitment. The other was clearly talented but never remotely justified the money or disruption surrounding him.

The decisive point is that Celtic supporters want to believe the manager knows what he is doing. They want confidence that the man in the dugout understands the job, the pressure and the standards required.

Whatever reservations people may have about Martin O’Neill now, nobody doubts that he understands those things. His record at Celtic is such that his presence almost allows you to pencil in around 90 league points before a ball has been kicked.

If Barnes or Nancy had looked capable of delivering that level of consistency, neither would have been dismissed so quickly. If either had demonstrated the authority, tactical judgement and results of a top Celtic manager, both would have become celebrated figures at the club.

I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

I wish both men well. Barnes repaired much of the damage he had done to his relationship with Celtic supporters when he corrected the record on his claims about race. Most fans had never hated him for failing as manager. They simply regarded his appointment as a poor decision and his tenure as an unsuccessful experiment.

The resentment came afterwards, when he offered an accusation that was unsupported by the facts. Once he withdrew it, most supporters were content to move on.

My feelings towards Nancy remain more complicated. On one hand, I feel terribly sorry for him. On the other, he did not do nearly enough research into the club he was joining.

He did not understand the size of Celtic, the demands of the position or what would be required from him immediately.

Listening to him after the League Cup final was genuinely alarming. He had lost his opening two matches, including an opportunity to win silverware, yet spoke with an ambivalence that suggested he did not fully grasp the significance of what had happened.

That was the moment many supporters realised he might not merely be out of his depth. He did not appear to understand how deep the water was.

Some of that was his responsibility. Any manager accepting the Celtic job should understand what he is walking into.

But much of the blame belongs to the people who appointed him.

They selected a coach without ensuring that he understood the institution, the expectation level, the squad he was inheriting or the speed with which results would be demanded. They failed him almost as badly as he failed himself.

The same was true of Barnes. Celtic handed one of the biggest managerial jobs in British football to a man who had never managed a single match.

Neither appointment should be used as evidence that Celtic supporters were unwilling to accept a black manager. Both should be studied as examples of what happens when executives make reckless appointments without properly considering whether the candidate is equipped for the job.

Barnes and Nancy were not dismissed because of who they were. They were dismissed because they were losing control of Celtic.

The real lesson is not that either man should have been given unlimited time. It is that neither should have been placed in such an impossible position without the necessary experience, preparation or support.

That must never be allowed to happen again.

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