IT WON’T BE DULL WITH BARTON IN THE DUGOUT!
‘Slow plodding midfielders like Gerrard and Lampard tend to be good managers’
FOR Joey Barton the impact of his absence from football was such that he struggled to get out of bed some mornings. So for the former Manchester City, Newcastle and Burnley midfielder, the chance to manage Fleetwood Town arrived just at the right time. Whether a partnership that took many people by surprise works out for the League One club remains to be seen.
At 35, Barton has declared his playing career to be over. A 13-month FA ban for breaching betting regulations expires this summer but there will be no return to the field for a talented, combative player who earned an England cap.
Instead, the Liverpudlian has signed a three-year contract at Fleetwood and will now seek to permanently fill a hole in his life that appeared almost as soon as he took his boots off for the last time.
‘For me, the devil makes work for idle hands,’ said Barton yesterday. ‘Sitting in the house or doing the garden quickly became very difficult for me.
‘You play golf, have a couple of shandies and realise this could lead to a lot of problems. We live like Peter Pan as players. We never think the end is going to come and then you are faced with the reality that you can’t play football for 13 months, you have to peer through the other side of that curtain and there were some tough days. I had a couple of days when I struggled to get out of bed.
‘Depression isn’t part of my nature. I’m quite optimistic, but when people talk about that darkness descending, I was like, “What am I doing?”
‘I had all these ambitions in my mind. I wanted to climb Everest, go to the Amazon, go on holidays. Then you realise you don’t actually want to do that. I’d love you to have 24 hours sitting behind these eyeballs. You’d probably be scarred for life.
‘But I’m like anyone. We’re human beings. You need to have a purpose.’
Say and think what you like about Barton but he has rarely lacked commitment to a cause. He may need it at Fleetwood, primarily a selling club.
His friendship with owner Andy Pilley certainly helped him get the job but there is nothing wrong with using your contacts in football. Barton — quick to criticise players and managers in his recent role as a radio pundit — has at least had the courage to start his coaching career some way down the ladder and knows there will be plenty waiting for him to fail.
‘I always try to tell the truth because then you don’t have to worry about anyone coming back and tripping you up,’ he explained.
‘I will try to be that way as a manager. If I am going to be successful I have to try to be successful being me. And everyone externally might think I am going to fail doing that.
‘But I can’t try to do this and be someone else because you will all see straight through that and the players will see straight through it and I will indeed fall flat on my face.
‘Of the 60 million people in this country, 30 million will be waiting for me to fail. In Scotland, all five million will be.’
That last remark was reference to an ill-fated spell at Rangers. In Scotland Barton upset people, as indeed he had done at various junctures of his career in England.
Yesterday Barton was happy to front up to his past. Some things he clearly regrets and some he doesn’t. Throughout, there was a hint of self-awareness and some self-deprecation too. So maybe he has learned a few things along the way.
It would appear that his relationship with Twitter may be at an end — which is perhaps just as well — but he may wish to think more carefully when he is before the mainstream media next season.
Asked, for example, what he made of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard moving into coaching, what was clearly meant to be a compliment ended up sounding anything but.
‘I think they will both be excellent,’ said Barton. ‘Slow plodding midfielders tend to become good managers.
‘Pep Guardiola is the best coach but was a midfielder who had no pace and no skills. Mauricio Pochettino was of similar profile. I had no skills, I wasn’t really big, wasn’t really quick and wasn’t really strong. So to survive as long as I did I had to be able to scheme, so hopefully that will help me.’
What Lampard and Gerrard, who have 220 England caps between them, make of being described as ‘slow and plodding’ is anybody’s guess. As for Barton, life as a manager has begun in fast forward and we should not be surprised.