NOT WORTH THE HASSLE
Barton the boss gives verdict on Barton the player
JOEY BARTON admitted he would not have signed himself as a player – because he was too much of a handful.
Barton, a controversial figure during his playing days, has been boss of League One Fleetwood Town for two seasons.
The former midfielder, who served a jail sentence for assault and several bans for on-field flare-ups and was handed an 18-month suspension for betting, was asked what he as a manager would have made of himself as a player.
“I don’t think I’d sign him,” said Barton. “He’s a nuisance.
“When I think about how Sean Dyche handled me as a manager, at the back end of my career, I thought he was outstanding in the way he allowed me to use my strengths to impact the team.
“Any time I came close to the line, as I invariably do because I’m so passionate and I want to win so much, he had great ways of putting checks and balances in place.
“He’s a really strong man, a really strong leader, and that’s all I needed. I needed discipline and a strong leader. I think I would have benefited playing for those types of managers.
“If I look back, as a young man growing up in the spotlight of the Premier League, I made a lot of mistakes and you wish you could go back and change them. Certainly some of the old managers, Kevin Keegan at
Man City, compared to when I had Kevin back at Newcastle, the first thing I did was apologise to him and say ‘I was an absolute idiot at times’.
“Joey Barton the player, at certain times, was a lot easier to manage than at other times, and people forget you have chaos going on in your life sometimes and you’ve got to play through it.”
Barton, 37, played for City, Newcastle, QPR, Marseille, Burnley and Rangers before retiring.
“I look back and as a player you think you know an awful lot, you’re very opinionated – and I was certainly in that category,” Barton told The Football Show.
“Then you get out of it, you come to the other side, the coaching side, and you realise just how much time and effort goes in, but also how difficult it is.”