Jan 3 2010 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun
AS yet, other than the continued health and happiness of my family, and the wife getting a boob job, I have just one wish for the new decade.
It’s that Joey Barton has crawled back under the stone from whence he came and is long forgotten by the time 2020 arrives.
Few things these last 10 years have been more pathetic than the repeated sound of Barton depicting himself as some sort of misunderstood anti-hero.
But the dumbing down of the BBC has been one of them.
So it was sadly appropriate that the Beeb’s supposed last bastion of erudition, Radio 4, should offer Barton a platform as the Noughties drew to a close.
First things first, Barton may have struck a chord with many when he told the Today programme: “Most footballers are knobs.”
May have, if he didn’t happen to be one of the biggest knobs in football.
“A lot of them are so detached from reality it’s untrue, and there was a stage when I was like that,” he said of his fellow pros.
“It’s only the fact I’m grounded by the trouble I have been in that’s forced me away from being in the football world.
“Driving round in flash cars and changing them like you change your socks, wearing stupid diamond watches and spending money like it’s going out of fashion in the middle of a recession when some people are struggling to put food on the table for the kids . . . it’s not the way to do it.”
Grounded? That’ll be why he parked his car on a grass verge next to double yellow lines outside a magistrates’ court to answer motoring charges only last month.
“Changing flash cars like socks”? The motor which Barton drove to court was an Aston Martin DB9 Vantage, and those charges related to his Land Rover, barely a year after he was nicked for driving in a bus lane in a Range Rover.
“Recession”? I have another “R” word for a bloke who has earned silly money for next to nothing at Newcastle United . . .
Rich.
“Detached from reality”? Look in the mirror, Joey.
If being grounded is shoving a lit cigar in a team-mate’s eye, knocking a teenage kid about, inflicting ABH (on another team-mate) and scrapping outside a McDonalds at 5.30am, then Barton is as down to earth as they come.
Unfair comment, given that he was talking about the Joey Barton of today rather than the serial offender of yesteryear? No, given the evidence of the last few months.
This is a man who, only in May, got himself sent off in one of the biggest games in Newcastle’s history before hurling obscenities at a manager who has done more for the club than Barton will achieve even in his most deluded fantasies.
This is a man who, three months and a shabby backdoor return to St James’ Park later, did exactly the same to the managerial duo who picked up where Alan Shearer reluctantly left off.
Strangely, Chris Hughton and Colin Calderwood have cultivated an unusual and clearly very valuable spirit of harmony in the Newcastle squad in recent months.
Barton would doubtless claim that is because the type of feckless wasters he referred to on Radio 4 have left the club.
I’d suggest it also has a lot to do with the bloke who reduced United’s final training session before the start of the season to a foul-mouthed slanging match being out with a long-term injury.
I can understand Hughton – ever the diplomat – saying he is looking forward to Barton’s comeback, but I see no reason why Newcastle’s players or fans should count the days until the return of the archetypal bad apple.
No reason, because Barton isn’t even much of a footballer.
And there’s the rub. In his own mind, filled as it is with the mumbo-jumbo of the touchy-feely Sporting Chance clinic, Joey may well be a flawed genius in the mould of a Maradona, Best or Gascoigne.
Sorry lad, but it just ain’t so. Not by a long chalk. Not even though you can string a sentence together better than most in your profession.
“I didn’t want to be famous, I want to play football. For me, it was never about cars, women, money – whatever people perceive comes with it,” he reflected
Funny then, that Barton is reportedly being paid an extra £675,000 a year by Newcastle for his image rights.
Oh, and if we’re sticking to matters on the field, he has started 31 games for the Magpies in two-and-a-half years, scoring two goals, at a total cost of at least £11 million.
It’s not even as if the two months of that time which were spent in prison fell during the season. Neither is it the case that he looked anything remotely special during his first few weeks in Championship football.
No, judge Barton on a football level, and you’d throw away the key.
But in terms of lost causes, he may have nothing on the BBC . . .
Keep up to date with the news. Sign up for News Alerts
Have your say on the latest news and sport in our Forums
No comments:
Post a Comment