Barnes sets out on tough road

John Barnes may have arrived in Glasgow at the end of a playing career as one of the most skilful Englishmen of his generation but Celtic's multitude of fans want the answer to only one question. "Can he manage?"

It is a myth that anyone who ever played with three lions on their chest is reviled north of Carlisle. The best of them - Matthews, Finney and Charlton - are all revered as honourable opponents and the man from Jamaica can be placed near enough to that list.

Ever since he dribbled past what seemed to be the entire Brazilian defence in the Maracana to announce his arrival as a winger, Barnes would find few critics in a country likely to be saying under its breath "I wish we had one like him." It was only when the latest Celtic upheaval placed Kenny Dalglish on the board of the club and his appointment of Barnes as the day-to-day coach of the team that doubts began to be expressed.

Celtic are the fourth largest supported club in the world and their fans worry about the wisdom of putting a novice in charge of their affairs. He can only prove them wrong by winning the championship this season and the European Cup 12 months later. Anything else would be regarded in Bairds Bar and associated drinking holes as completely unacceptable. All summer his every utterance has been examined for clues that he understands the demands of the job.

There is a feeling that Barnes might not quite understand what is at stake in these parts as Celtic attempt to overtake Rangers. Dalglish hardly did his pal a favour when he unveiled his choice as the successor to Jozef Venglos, whose one-year stint at the club left him consulting his birth certificate and inquiring about bus passes back in Slovakia. This is not the sort of job you do for fun.

On that day he revealed that Barnes, as a young Watford player, had shown himself both interested and capable of becoming a coach by going down the road and helping out at Eton. The very thought of even bothering to look after the toffs in one of the world's most elitist educational establishments was hardly something to impress fans who wanted to know whether he had any master plans to boot Neil McCann and his various Rangers pals up and down Ibrox during the first Old Firm match. And then some.

"I'm beginning to get excited, just two days to go," he said yesterday. Celtic kick off their season tomorrow evening in Aberdeen. "I guess it's the same all over the world, a new season, a fresh challenge. And because it is my first time as a manager, it will add an edge to it." It will certainly do so if they lose and Barnes, nobody's fool, has worked that one out if anyone cares to listen.

"What you want is consistency. If you can keep winning individual games, you find yourself winning the league. Certainly as a manager you have to be more interested in performance than results but you want to find a way of playing as well as you can all the time."

The acquisition of the midfield playmaker Eyal Berkovic from West Ham United promises to give Scottish football an exciting new talent but Barnes was part of a Liverpool side who never lost sight of the fact that good defending is the most important tool in the professional game.

Stability essential Dalglish, who has been given a fat cheque book, has scoured Europe to bring in foreigners who may or may not turn out to be capable of playing for the cause. Olivier Tebily, Bobby Petta and Stilian Petrov are hardly household names and maybe no better than the men they will replace.

For all that, there is still some nervousness about a club which clearly needs a period of stability but which also needs to win the championship. The architect who designed the facade at Celtic Park clearly fell down on the job when he failed to install a revolving door for arriving and departing managers.

David Hay, Billy McNeill, Liam Brady, Lou Macari, Tommy Burns, Wim Jansen and Venglos have all come and gone for the apparent reason that they failed to win as many games as Rangers.

Barnes will be advised to ensure that solidarity is central to the task that he is undertaking. Celtic, united, may never be easily beaten but forging such fraternalism has been beyond the grasp of too many of his predecessors for comfort.