Football I will walk away if the owner doesn’t want me - Joey
I am absolutely sure if this club is going to turn around, on and off the pitch, we are the people to do it and I am the man to lead the group
JOEY Barton has revealed he told Wael Al-Qadi he would “walk away” if the Bristol Rovers owner believed he was not the right man for the job after a 3-1 defeat to Swindon Town on Saturday.
The Gas owner was in attendance to watch his former manager, Ben Garner, mastermind an impressive performance from the Robins as they came from behind to win at a rain-soaked Memorial Stadium.
Harry Anderson rounded off a brilliant move to put Rovers ahead in the first half, but their performance levels fell off a cliff from there and goals from Jack Payne and Harry McKirdy sandwiched Ben Gladwin’s penalty after Alfie Kilgour received a second yellow card for handling in the box.
The defeat leaves the Gas with just 10 points from 10 games, leaving them in 20th place in League Two and prompting growing criticism from the terraces.
Barton surely cannot afford many more performances like this at Rovers, but he insists Al-Qadi has given him renewed backing.
“I just spoke to Wael,” said Barton. “I had a chat with him in the office afterwards. He is absolutely 100 per cent behind us.
“For me, I don’t want any money out of the football club. I will happily walk away.
“It’s not about waiting to be dismissed, it’s about changing the culture and changing the football club.
“It’s tough at this moment, it really is, but I’m the third manager in less than a year so I think they have realised changing manager isn’t necessarily the right thing to do.
“I spoke to Wael and I said ‘If you don’t think I’m the right guy for this, there is absolutely no problem and I will step away.’ He doesn’t think that. He thinks we are the right group to turn this club around.
“Very, very difficult at this moment in time. I think the things around me with the supporter base maybe get exacerbated by stuff that’s happened away from the field. But I am absolutely sure if this club is going to turn around, on and off the pitch, we are the people to do it and I am the man to lead the group.”
Barton started the season insistent Rovers would achieve an immediate return to League One,
but he now accepts the Pirates are a long way from achieving their aims. You come in with lots of optimism about this season and think ‘Can we get promoted? Can we challenge?’ and you’re bookies’ favourites, but I just think we’re miles away at this moment in time from being consistent enough to go and
put a string of results together to get ourselves in contention,” he admitted.
“The fortunate thing for us is everyone in the league seems to be on a similar pathway, everybody seems to beat everybody, and the sooner we get consistent, the sooner we can give the Gasheads what they want, which is a team to be proud of.
“As good as we were last week, there were spells today where it’s two steps forward and one step backwards, some might even argue two steps backwards.
“The only way out of it is hard work on the training ground.”