Barton bears no grudge against boss Warburton
JOEY BARTON last night insisted he bore no grudge against Mark Warburton as he reflected on the ‘incredible disappointment’ of his disastrous short spell at Rangers. The 34-year-old midfielder’s £20,000-a-week contract was terminated in November, having previously been suspended following a verbal bust-up with Warburton in the wake of September’s crushing 5-1 defeat to Celtic. Terms of his severance prevented Barton from discussing details of that flashpoint, but he struck a conciliatory note as he looked back in more general terms. Barton claimed to harbour no regrets over joining Rangers and praised the scale and intensity of the club. ‘The only regret I’ve got
is not playing football now,’ said Barton, speaking on BBC Radio Five Live. ‘No player wants to miss football when they are fit, especially not when they are 34 and you haven’t got another ten years to play. ‘My last game at Rangers was an Old Firm defeat at Celtic Park. Nobody wants to play eight games for a club. You want to have more of an impact and make more of an impression. Certainly for the amount of backing the fans gave me and the belief they put in me — and obviously by the football club to get me there in the first place. ‘So I’m incredibly disappointed. I mean, who knows what happens in the future? I don’t know where I’m going to be or what I’m going to do. ‘I look back at the first year at QPR with real disappointment. I went out to France, got the opportunity to go back to QPR and kind of right the wrongs of what went on in the first year. ‘So I’ve got no issue at Rangers. Rangers is a fantastic football club. I’ve got no issue with Mark Warburton, no issue with Davie Weir, no issue with anyone on the board. ‘Life is too short to look back and hold on to things, thinking if that could have played out that way then this would have happened. ‘I’m focusing on the future. I’m fortunate enough that I’ve still got a bit about me. I step back south of the border and have an enormous amount of credibility. ‘People want me to come to their football club and my phone has rang a number of times about where I am going to be in January. So I’m lucky.’ In an interview published in September, Barton was quoted as saying he would ‘probably not’ have made the same decision about his future when weighing up whether to move to Scotland. He took a different stance last night when asked if he would have stayed in England had he been able to revisit leaving Burnley. ‘No. I’d have signed for Rangers,’ he replied. ‘It was an opportunity I couldn’t let pass.’