I can barely leave the house these days without someone asking me about former Bristol Rovers manager Joey Barton. I am shuffling down the bread aisle in Sainsbury’s and, without exception, I will be asked my opinion of Barton’s latest rant. Why me, I wonder? I haven’t been to the Rovers for over five years and I never once considered going back when Liverpool’s least favourite son became the most disgraceful managerial appointment in the history of the football club. Actually, the most disgraceful employee full stop. “Rick, what do you think?”
I will keep this short and sweet and hopefully, although I can’t promise, for the last time. And I have to be careful what I write given the apparently litigious nature of football’s self-proclaimed bad boy. So, I’ll restrict what I say to a few words and that will be it.
The raging Joey Barton is the same Joey Barton we have all known and .. ahem … loved. The controversial sexist, homophobic, racist, hard man is not some personality reinvention, or a descent into madness. It’s a stone cold calculated career decision, made on the basis that his time in football is over and he is moving into the potentially lucrative far right media world. Do not be surprised when and if he turns up with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson), Katie Hopkins, Laurence Fox and all the other bampots on the ugliest fringes of politics, presumably with a show on GB News with added guest appearances on InfoWars and the like.
As you may have gathered, no one really asks me what I think about Barton and why should they? But what I think of Barton, in all seriousness, is that he’s a wrong ‘un, that this current version is no different from the previous one and that he is, as he has always been a preacher of hate.
My millions of readers will not be reading a great deal more, if anything at all, about this horrible little toad, at least on this award-winning blog (what? – ed). His angry ranting is aimed more at the hard of thinking, some of whom proclaim, entirely predictably, that “he is only saying what we are all thinking”. Well, if you’re one of those for whom Barton is saying what you’re thinking, give your heads a big wobble and seek urgent medical help. I can certainly recommend some good therapists if you think you need one. And if you’re nodding your head along with his posts on X, trust me, you do.
