Former Celtic manager calls out Rangers for cheating

John Barnes has blamed Rangers’ dodgy transfer policy for his torrid time as Celtic head coach and getting sacked inside just eight months.

In hindsight, John Barnes appointment as Celtic head coach just months after announcing his retirement was always doomed for failure. The Liverpool legend did register as a player at Parkhead as well but failed to make an appearance before he was sacked following an embarrassing 2-1 defeat against lower league Inverness.

Celtic finished the season in second position but there was a gigantic 21-point gap between them and champions Rangers. The season was not completely lost though as the club managed to win the League Cup after Kenny Dalglish took over from Barnes.

And while it would have probably never worked for Barnes, the circumstances certainly did not help him either. Larsson was injured for most of the season and managed just 13 appearances. But an even bigger issue was probably the astronomical amounts of money that Rangers were throwing around on players.

In fact, players were turning down Premier League contracts to turn up for the Ibrox side. And Celtic could not afford to keep up as a result.

But as it turns out Rangers could not afford their players either and were avoiding tax. It was only a matter of time before it caught up to them. And when it eventually, the club were forced into extinction in 2012.

Barnes has still been left wondering what would have been if the two clubs were operating on a level playing field and called out the Rangers for their dodgy transfer policy. As reported by Herald Scotland, he said:

"“Rangers were going through a period of spending a lot of money they didn’t have.“I don’t know how people couldn’t have understood that when you had the best players from England coming up here and getting paid what they were getting paid. How were they doing that? They were winning so football fans didn’t care.“When I came Rangers still had those players, such as Van Bronckhorst, who they were paying more.”"

It is ironical that even after those years, some Rangers fans have the nerve to claim that if Celtic are handed the league title this season by the SFA, it would mean nothing.