The washed-up footballer now trying to make a career out of being an obnoxious bully to women
No one denies his right to criticise some women soccer commentators – it’s called free speech. But Joey Barton can’t tell the difference between debate and vile abuse
VIOLENCE, occasionally of the extreme kind, was a part of Joey Barton’s life from the beginning. In his autobiography, No Nonsense, he relates an encounter with an Alsatian at the age of four on his Liverpool housing estate.
The unattended dog happened upon him as he played in a concrete tunnel in a school playground, biting him repeatedly on the face. So badly, indeed, that he required surgery and ten days in hospital.
Tracked down to the pub, his father was told of the attack and, after making sure that his son was in good hands, borrowed a friend’s van and headed for the playground. Spotting the dog roaming the school playing fields, he drove the van through the gates and, without hesitating, ran it over at high speed.
He then reversed the van over the animal to make sure it was properly dead, before he leapt out to confront the shocked owner. According to Joey, only a profuse apology saved the man from a severe beating. ‘It wasn’t abnormal,’ he writes. ‘It was an accepted form of behaviour.’
Joey Barton – he prefers family or friends to call him Joe or Joseph – has been practising this uncompromising approach to perceived challenges in one form or another ever since.
The Premier League footballer turned manager was notorious for getting into fights on and off the pitch, resulting in a blighted sporting career – and a spell in prison.
Turning the other cheek is not in the Barton family chemistry – his brother has served time for his involvement in a murder. If there is a fight, Barton may well be the one to start it.
Family, wealth and a professed fascination for philosophy and art – he is a fan of painter John Singer Sargent – have not blunted his taste for a punch-up, which he gained in the urban jungle that was St John’s estate in Huyton. Today, however, the blows are more likely to be landed in written form, on X, formerly Twitter.
Barton, 41, needs a new career, now that football has tired of his excesses. And that career is being carved out on social media where his predilection for a good scrap attracts a following in the low millions.
His is the voice of the supposedly disenfranchised white, middle-aged male, increasingly assailed by an advancing tide of invasive wokery.
Barton understands one thing clearly: his continuing relevance depends on pushing the boundaries and feeding the fire of populist extremism. First, launch a shocking attack and, when the counterattack comes, double down, lashing out at opponents in nihilistic style.
His chosen battlefield of the moment is women and football commentary.
In a bizarre tirade starting last week, the former Manchester City and Newcastle midfielder used X to lambast ITV pundit Eni Aluko, a former Chelsea and England player, and commentator Lucy Ward, an ex-Leeds United forward, for the quality of their analysis, labelling them the ‘Fred and Rose West’ of soccer punditry.
Writing of Aluko, Barton asked: ‘How is she even talking about men’s football. She can’t even kick a ball properly.’
In comparing the women to two of the most notorious serial killers in British history Barton was guilty not only of offensive hyperbole but of blatant misogyny.
In his view, Aluko’s sex was enough to disqualify her from having an opinion on an Everton v Crystal Palace match. The abuse kept on coming: ‘Shut up you f***ing idiots. Keep them off the tele. They’re ruining the game for everyone of us.’ Other female commentators received a similar savaging over the festive period, their presence on screen dismissed as ‘nonsense’ and ‘tokenism’.
This followed his claim that women working in male football clubs posed a threat to players’ marriages, tempting them into affairs by sending pictures of themselves naked to their targets.
By way of justification, Barton invoked the memory of his great grandfather and his service in World War I. Patrick Stanton, he said, had been awarded a medal for gallantry for defending freedom and he was doing the same by not standing idly by while his country was being torn down.
‘I’m that Black Sheep,’ posted Barton. ‘That lone wolf. The one who doesn’t need your money. That doesn’t need your influence. That doesn’t fear you. That you can’t cancel. You will have to kill me.’
Questioned on television about his outbursts by Piers Morgan, Barton sought to justify them by arguing he was challenging the women’s expertise not their sex. They were, he said, simply not qualified to comment on the male game, which was much faster than the female version. He wasn’t against female commentators in principle but was intolerant of ‘unqualified opinions’.
‘I don’t want to see sexism in football,’ he claimed in a breathtaking reversal. ‘But if we don’t debate [the role of women in football broadcasting] properly, this is just going to rise and rise, and ruin the experience of watching elitelevel men’s football.’
Challenged by Morgan about the inflammatory nature of his social media posts, he dodged the question: ‘Everywhere you turn now, there’s an unqualified opinion pontificating about the sport I love, and it’s ruining my experience – to fuel this woke agenda.
‘And it’s going to increase sexism massively.’
There are plenty of football fans who have gripes about the overall standard of television soccer commentary, with its clichés and banalities, all rewarded with ridiculously high pay. There is nothing wrong in principle with querying the quality and experience of a commentator – male or female.
And, to be fair, there are many who agree with Barton about the growing number of female presenters commentating on the men’s game.
In October last year, former England manager Kevin Keegan, 72, said he believed ‘lady footballers’ were not qualified to express opinions about the men’s international game. ‘I don’t like to listen to ladies talking about the England men’s team at the match because I don’t think it’s the same experience,’ he said.
The point is Barton has not only chosen a controversial subject in attacking female pundits, but then ramped up the controversy with attention-seeking abuse by spouting vile, misogynistic comments and comparing the subjects of his attack with two of this country’s most notorious mass murderers.
And attention is what it is all about. Because if you are Joey Barton and the door has closed on your football career – the options are limited.
The trouble is his spell in management was brief, starting with League One club Fleetwood Town, in Lancashire, in 2018. He left in 2021 after a run of poor form and a
fallout with one of the club’s strikers. He then became manager of Bristol Rovers but was sacked last October, weeks after an astonishing rant about one of his players whom he labelled ‘an idiotic young boy’ and a ‘weak, feeble-minded individual’ for an error in a 2-0 defeat.
Barton may not have been in the top tier of footballing multimillionaires but his periods in the Premier League and management have likely left him in a very comfortable position.
He and his wife Georgia, his childhood sweetheart with whom he has four children, have been residents of Kew, an affluent suburb of southwest London. It is not known what Mrs Barton, a stylist by profession, thinks of her husband’s views – she maintains a low profile.
Whatever the case, the nether world of online populism suits his combative style perfectly. He appeals to a following that either buys into the anti-woke agenda or regards his provocative, expletive-laden outbursts as a form of black comedy. The inevitable combat involved is second nature to Joey Barton. His skill as a player was forever being eclipsed by his propensity for losing it on and off the field.
In 2004 he jabbed a cigar in the eye of fellow Manchester City player Jason Tandy during a bibulous Christmas party, resulting in him being docked six weeks’ wages. More sanctions followed.
In 2007 he was involved in a training ground brawl with Ousmane Dabo, resulting in a six-match ban and a four-month suspended sentence for actual bodily harm.
In 2008 he was sentenced to six months in prison for assault and affray following a fight in Liverpool city centre.
And in 2012 he was given a 12- game ban after elbowing Carlos Tevez in the throat during a match between Queens Park Rangers and Manchester City.
Barton’s pugilistic tendencies transferred easily to Twitter.
When Gary Lineker accused him of ‘raging’ and ‘kicking out’, Barton branded him an ‘odious little toad’. As for football pundit and former England player Gary Neville, Barton threatened him, saying he would ‘get emptied’. Neville’s crime had been to back a statement issued by ITV Sport, which described the way Barton targeted its presenters Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward, as ‘clearly contemptible and shameful on his part’. But Lineker and Neville are not alone in drawing Barton’s anger. Radio presenter Jeremy Vine was called a ‘little weasel’ after the footballer’s behaviour was discussed on his show. ‘Stop talking about me on your sh **** show,’ he railed. Of course, the oxygen of publicity is vital to pundits like Barton who must operate largely outside the conventional media. And provocative comments attract publicity. The ex-player is not alone in using shock tactics to maintain his profile. Actor Laurence Fox, a poster boy for right-wing populism, achieved the desired effect when he launched a deeply offensive attack using sexual imagery on a female journalist in an appearance on GB News. Though they are from very different backgrounds, Harrow-educated Fox, like Barton, is seeking to substitute one career for another. As offers of parts have dried up due to his increasingly polarising comments, he has sought refuge in right-wing punditry, standing for political office as a candidate for the fringe Reclaim Party.
For the time being, shock is working for Barton. Yesterday, the UK government boosted his profile by condemning his remarks on female commentators.
Perhaps foolishly, UK sports minister Stuart Andrew waded into the controversy by informing the culture, media and sport select committee that he was examining ways to counter what he described as Barton’s ‘dangerous comments’.
The minister promised to write to X and the technology company Meta which is due to host Barton’s show, Common Sense With Joey Barton, next month. Mr Andrew indicated that broadcasting watchdog Ofcom might also intervene. ‘These are dangerous comments that open the floodgates for abuse and that’s not acceptable,’ Mr Andrew said. ‘But I’m always slightly wary in these situations that these sorts of people want the oxygen, and I don’t want to fuel that.’
Barton will doubtless savour the prospect of becoming a martyr for freedom of speech, a victim of government repression. But he is likely to discover that the public wearies of the anger.
One doesn’t have to be a woke warrior to tire of such grandstanding.