Barnes steps down as Jamaica coach to replace Moore at Tranmere

[MrsB]

Sportsmail, 14th June 2009



John Barnes is poised to return to English football as manager of Coca-Cola League One side Tranmere, according to the Jamaica Football Federation.

The former Watford and Liverpool winger, capped 79 times by England, has stepped down from his role as Jamaica coach in order to succeed Ronnie Moore, who was sacked by Tranmere at the end of last season.
Jamaica manager John Barnes

The Jamaica Football Federation vehemently denied reports Barnes had been sacked and revealed he had notified them of his decision to step down in order to take charge at Prenton Park.

Barnes, 45, was appointed as coach of the Reggae Boyz in September last year.

A JFF statement explained: 'His contract was due to expire on June 30, 2009. Barnes secured a contract with Tranmere Rovers in England for the upcoming English football season and advised the JFF of that development last Sunday morning.

'With Barnes securing a job prior to the Gold Cup, the JFF decided in the long-term interest of the game not to offer him a short-term extension, but to appoint Theodore Whitmore as national coach for the remainder of the life of this administration.'

The decision to replace Barnes with Whitmore, Jamaica's coach during the final three World Cup qualifiers last year, was confirmed following an emergency meeting of JFF directors.

Jamaican-born Barnes began his playing career with Watford in 1981 and made his debut for the Hornets aged 17 before then Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish paid £900,000 to take him to Anfield in the summer of 1987.

Barnes quickly cemented his place as one of Liverpool's outstanding players, playing alongside the likes of Ian Rush, Peter Beardsley and John Aldridge.
Liverpool striker Ronny Rosenthal holds aloft one of the two league championship trophies

He had a brief spell at Newcastle where he teamed up with Dalglish again, and finished his playing career at Charlton.

Barnes also bossed Celtic, working in tandem with director of football Dalglish at Parkhead, but the partnership proved unsuccessful and he was sacked after seven months.

[Matt]

Good luck to him, hope for his sake it goes better than his Celtic stint.

There'll be pressure on him to get Tranny to the playoffs.

[dww]

John Barnes kicks off at Tranmere by blasting 'race barrier'

• Manager back in business after nine years looking for a post
• 'Young black managers aren't given enough time,' he says

Andy Hunter, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 June 2009 00.05 BST

John Barnes brought a nine-year exile from the British game to an end as the new manager of Tranmere Rovers yesterday and claimed that racial prejudice was behind his struggle to land a job after his dismissal from Celtic.

The former Liverpool and England winger has not coached in Britain since leaving Glasgow in the wake of Celtic's cup humiliation by Inverness Caledonian Thistle in February 2000. Barnes, 45, recently spent six months in charge of Jamaica and accepted Tranmere's offer out of a determination to succeed in management in this country. He admits he feared the opportunity would not materialise having been overlooked several times by lower-league English clubs and amid an increasing belief that race was a factor.

"It has taken a long time to get back and through no fault of my own," said Barnes, who will be assisted by his former Liverpool team-mate Jason McAteer. "If I could have got back in one week after leaving Celtic, I would have done. While I did other things, that was not by choice. It was because opportunities did not present themselves to me for many reasons.

"From the perspective of what happened with Celtic people might argue that I didn't have the experience for another big job but I don't think my experience with Celtic explains why I couldn't get a job in the fourth division. Look at how Paul Ince wasn't given enough time at Blackburn. Young English managers don't get enough time, young black managers aren't given enough time, there are a lot of reasons why. I went for a fair few jobs before this and lower down than Tranmere, at least half a dozen in the last five years."

Barnes will have to operate on a reduced budget at the League One club and has only a dozen senior players under contract. He added: "I think there still is a race barrier in this country. Look at how disproportionate it is in terms of the number of black ex-players who are not in management and the number of black ex-players who are older than myself who haven't been offered a job. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is racist but there is that stereotypical view that some people have of black people and black managers in terms of their competence, which for me is different to racist abuse you might encounter walking down the street. There is a misconception over whether black ex-players can make successful managers."

[Matt]

It does my head in when people play the race card.

He was crap at Celtic and his media roles - I'm thinking his stint fronting Channel 5 football - hardly did him any favours portraying him as intelligent or articulate.

There are 92 league clubs in England, not many jobs available and there are god knows how many ex-players. There are plenty of non-black managers who are axed without having time to bed into the role.

[dww]

To be fair he makes to more general point about young managers. There is obviously a disparity between the number of black players and managers but to some extent that is a historical inevitability but there is a good chance that racism has played a part.

In Barnes own case being crap in his one job (although to be fair Celtic is a big ask for a first coaching job in some ways) was probably the defining factor. Also I have my doubts that any vacancy in the non league would not have been his for the asking - someone like him could put a 1000 on the gates at a lot of clubs which none of them would sniff at and it did no harm for O'Neills career to start at that level.

[Matt]

I took 'fourth division' to mean League Two.

True it's a tough job at Celtic where anything other than winning the league is dismal failure but he had Dalglish there with him.

The fact is he hasn't been a very attractive candidate for jobs since, especially considering the competition when roles come up.

I don't see how racism has played a part, to be honest with you Dave.

[Joe King]

I'm thinking he is lacking experience on his bench. I know he has Mcateer who has worked at Tranmere before but someone like Terry Mac, but he's at Huddersfield.

[dww]

I took 'fourth division' to mean League Two.

True it's a tough job at Celtic where anything other than winning the league is dismal failure but he had Dalglish there with him.

The fact is he hasn't been a very attractive candidate for jobs since, especially considering the competition when roles come up.

I don't see how racism has played a part, to be honest with you Dave.

I was saying it probably didn't much for him but I do think it is a genuine problem in football more widely. It has always been a bit of an old boys network (how else would Souness have kept getting decent jobs) and that always disadvantages those who are in a group that hasn't had access to the higher eschelons in the past - it's not direct racism perhaps but it remains a problem.

I was talking about the Conference almost as a criticism of Barnes really - in the sense that I do feel his name would have got him a job at that level and if he wasn't willing to go there then it is more fool him really. If he did try and was rejected I would be interested to hear the reasons.

[dww]

Tranmere's John Barnes appointment is a gamble that's unlikely to pay off


Posted by Gregg Roughley Tuesday 16 June 2009 11.49 BST guardian.co.uk

If Ronnie Moore was axed for a drop in crowds, just imagine what will happen when John Barnes and Jason McAteer get going

John Barnes. Think wing wizardry. Think rapping. Think awful television presenting.

Jason McAteer. Think shampoo. Think pizza. Think Spice Boys. Think run-of-the-mill midfielder.

So when it was announced that Barnes, the failed Celtic and Jamaica manager, was to succeed Ronnie Moore at Prenton Park, and that his No2 would be the likeable, but very much wet behind the ears, McAteer, eyebrows were indeed raised.

Why would Tranmere chairman Peter Johnson sack Moore in the first place? After all, he guided Rovers to within a point of the play-offs last season and has the credentials needed to get an unfashionable club punching above its weight – he got Rotherham promoted from the third tier on two occasions.

The answer lies in Tranmere's close proximity to the two Premier League giants a short ferryride across the Mersey. The battle to persuade Liverpudlians and Evertonians, particularly those from the Wirral, to watch Tranmere as well as their red or blue love-interest has been ongoing for many years. Friday night football has been a common occurrence at Prenton Park since the 1980s in order to avoid clashes with Liverpool and Everton fixtures and boost crowds.

Johnson did not even try to pretend dismissing Moore was football-based decision. In fact, he highlighted the 19% drop in attendances in Moore's three-year stint at Tranmere as the key factor. Many Rovers fans have already been heard to grumble that attendances are sure to drop even further when Barnes and McAteer get the club relegated to League Two next May.

But what many supporters will find hardest to stomach is that if the club wanted a Wirral-based former Liverpool player with a decent record and hunger to succeed in management, then Paul Ince, not Barnes, was the man to call upon. Barnes may be the bigger draw for curious Liverpool fans flirting with the idea of the odd visit to Prenton Park, but Ince has pedigree in the lower leagues and a burning desire to salvage his reputation after his disastrous tenure at Blackburn (although judging by talking-up of West Brom on Sky last night, he may be setting his sights higher).

Perhaps Barnes can use his stature and influence at Anfield to call in some decent loan signings from his former club (industrious Reds midfielder Jay Spearing is already a mooted Rovers capture) to make up for the empty transfer kitty, but improving on Moore's seventh-placed finish last season is an unenviable task for any manager, let alone one with such poor credentials.

Johnson's predecessor at Prenton Park, Lorraine Rogers, said upon quitting last year that the "sport had become more about money than about football". Johnson seems to understand that more than most. He has already set about advertising his Love2Shop business on the back of Tranmere's shirts in an attempt to increase sales.

But Johnson's decision is a huge gamble. He will have to hope that Barnes and McAteer rise to the sink-or-swim challenge. Otherwise they will look how many expect them to – hopelessly out of their depth.

[Matt]

I was saying it probably didn't much for him but I do think it is a genuine problem in football more widely. It has always been a bit of an old boys network (how else would Souness have kept getting decent jobs) and that always disadvantages those who are in a group that hasn't had access to the higher eschelons in the past - it's not direct racism perhaps but it remains a problem.

I was talking about the Conference almost as a criticism of Barnes really - in the sense that I do feel his name would have got him a job at that level and if he wasn't willing to go there then it is more fool him really. If he did try and was rejected I would be interested to hear the reasons.

I'm sure any official reasons would be football-related! I just think if he wants to cite racism as a cause of his lack of success he should back it up with hard evidence.

Fair point on Souness. That's a mystery to me too.

[dww]

Liverpool fringe players will help Tranmere out assures Jason McAteer

Jun 16 2009

By James Pearce, Liverpool Daily Post


JASON McATEER has revealed that Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez has already offered to help Tranmere’s new management team.

Rovers only have eight senior players under contract for next season and with limited resources the assistant manager admits they will be looking to bolster the squad with loan signings.

"We’ve got two of the biggest clubs in the world on our doorstep in Liverpool and Manchester United," he said. "Not to use them and the help they could give us would be daft.

"We’re under no illusions – budgets are tight, there’s no money here and we want to bring in some loan players.

"But we don’t just want to bring in any loan player, we want to bring in good quality young loan players who are going to make the team better."

[Shaggy]

Good luck to Digger and Trigger.

[dww]

Good luck to Digger and Trigger.

Well I suppose they avoided the Macca and Spacca pairing selected by Setanta.

[dww]

From the Guardian joy of six footballing what ifs:

6. Henrik Larsson hadn't broken his leg, Lyon 1-0 Celtic, Uefa Cup, 21/10/1999

It's a good job Britain isn't a borderline racist country, or we'd be seriously moved to question why John Barnes didn't get an other management job for almost a decade after leaving Celtic. Yes, he ultimately a failure in Scotland, but being a failed British manager is surely the basis for inclusion rather than ostracism. And, unlike so many of his peers who ballsed up from start to increasingly inevitable, finish, Barnes was viciously unlucky when Henrik Larsson – the best player in Scotland, followed by a ridiculous amount of daylight – broke his leg in a Uefa Cup tie in Lyon. As Larsson's leg snapped grotesquely at 45 degrees, so Celtic's season did a 180. As the table below shows, their form with and without him was not so much hot and cold as volcanic and Antarctic.
Celtic under John Barnes with and without Henrik Larsson

Played Won Drawn Lost For Against Win percentage Loss percentage Goals per game Goals conceded per game
Before injury 13 12 0 1 42 3 92 8 3.23 0.23
After injury 16 7 2 7 33 22 44 44 2.06 1.4

Celtic were not just winning with Larsson; they were dismantling teams with some gloriously aesthetic football. Indeed, five days before that Lyon match they had eviscerated Aberdeen 7-0 – and been berated by Barnes for their sloppy passing. (In one of the great forgotten hexes, Celtic beat Aberdeen 5-0, 7-0, 6-0 and 5-1 in their four league meetings that season.) It is easy to say that a side should not be so dependent on one player, and that's a valid point, but Larsson was so superior as to make that a simple fact of life. In six seasons between 1998 and his departure in 2004, Larsson was the league's top scorer in five; 1999-2000 was the exception that ruled against Barnes. In the following season, Martin O'Neill's first at the club, Larsson scored 53 goals as Celtic won a treble. Barnes might have let things unravel anyway; or, with Larsson fit and firing, he rather than O'Neill might have been the man who knocked Rangers off their perch.

[Fivex]

If I'm reading this correctly, you're implying that John Barnes has made an audacious attempt to swipe Larsson from the clutches of Helsingborg?