Joey Barton charged for 44 bets
Troubled star charged with multiple wagers on games
Joey Barton’s calamitous season at rangers has taken another turn for the worse after he was hit with a scottish Football association charge for betting on matches.
Barton, 34, is accused by the sFa of placing 44 football bets between July 1 and september 15 this summer.
Sportsmail understands Barton is not alleged to have bet on matches involving his own club rangers.
only one of the games involved a match involving a scottish club, when Barton placed a bet on Celtic’s Champions League trip to Barcelona last month. He had gambled on the Catalan club to have a substantial victory. Barca won the match 7-0.
the sFa’s regulations ban players from betting on any football match and the rules have been the same in england since august 2014.
Barton had spent the past two seasons in england under those regulations while playing for Queens Park rangers and Burnley.
Last season, Manchester City defender Martin Demichelis received a fine in the region of £22,000 from the Fa after betting on 29 matches in a three-week period. the games Barton gambled on are believed to have been in england or in european competition.
In his recently released autobiography, No Nonsense, Barton revealed that he became the ‘unofficial bookmaker’ at Liverpool’s Walton prison while serving a sixmonth sentence for common assault and affray in 2008.
He wrote: ‘He (Barton’s cellmate Billy) urged me to find my place in the system, which I duly discovered scanning the racing page. I had a eureka moment studying the form, and realised the prison lacked a bookie.
‘ I borrowed Billy’s chocolate stash to establish a float, gave us insurance by skimming the original odds, and recorded all bets in a notebook. Before long we were an illegitimate version of Cadbury World.
‘I diversified, using my inside knowledge to create a range of markets for that summer’s european Championships in austria and switzerland. It didn’t matter that england had failed to qualify. I offered odds on opening goalscorer, number of cards, timing of goals and the final result. When confectionery supplies ran low, we accepted toiletries, bedding and food privileges as stakes. the screws inevitably discovered our scam, but were sanguine about its success, since they trusted us to prevent inmates getting too deep into debt.’
Barton is due to return to training with rangers on Monday after a three-week suspension following a training ground bust-up. the player who was capped once by england, back in 2007, was sent home from training following an altercation that was reported to have involved team-mates and coaching staff.
the heated exchange featured captain Lee Wallace and midfielder andy Halliday as well as manager Mark Warburton and coach David Weir.
the confrontation took place in the days following rangers’ 5-1 defeat by Celtic in the old Firm derby.
Barton will now return with this latest controversy hanging over him and he is likely to receive a ban of one or two matches from the sFa. rangers declined to make any comment last night. Barton has until october 12 to reply to the allegation, with a hearing set to take place on october 27.