LAWWELL TRIED TO LURE ME TO CELTIC, SAYS JOEY

after he was issued with a three-week suspension following his training-ground row with manager Mark Warburton and team-mate Andy Halliday.

The fiery midfielder attended a meeting with Warburton and Ibrox board members yesterday to discuss last week’s flare-up, which took place as players and staff picked over their 5-1 hammering from Celtic.

The fact he was not reinstated to the squad, and instead told to stay away until October 10, suggests the process could now lead to the end of his time with the club after just eight

appearances. Yet in his book Barton suggests things could have been so different. He reveals that just the day before he was due to travel to Glasgow to conclude negotiations with Rangers, he ‘took a call from an agent, who had been contacted by Peter Lawwell, Celtic’s chief executive’. Barton writes: ‘The message he conveyed was straight and to the point: “Is there anything we can do together? Can we have a conversation?”. Barton goes on to describe the apparent approach as ‘a smart move’. But continues: ‘I sent word back, thanking him for his interest but confirming my intentions.’ Yet his Ibrox stay looks to be heading for an abrupt end. In a revealing interview with Sportsmail, published today but conducted before the Auchenhowie confrontation broke into the public domain last Thursday, Barton admits people can sometimes ‘struggle with his personality’. ‘I can fall out with you and two minutes later it’s done,’ he said. ‘It can be fireworks. I tell you what I think of you, you tell me what you think of me. ‘We’re better for this, then it’s gone. I am happy to carry on with the relationship but they are still analysing what’s been said, how it affects things. I’m way beyond it.’ The 34-year-old also spoke of blanking out Scott Brown when he was baited by the Celtic captain in the Old Firm rout at Parkhead. In June, Barton had sparked a war of words between the two men by claiming Brown was ‘not even in my league’. ‘Scott Brown, after they scored the second goal, ran past and wanted a confrontation of some form,’ said Barton. ‘I just blocked it out. It would have been easier for me to respond because that’s what I’ve done in the past. Your instinct is always your instinct. ‘We can try to control it, put it in a box. But your instinct is still your instinct. I am looking thinking: “If it was a boxing match it would be a totally different outcome. If it’s one on one, not 11 v 11, I wonder if you would be as smug as you are now”. ‘The reality is, I was asked a question a while back, said some things. When you get turned over you’ve got to take a kick in the balls. They turned us over. You have to hold your hands up.’ Barton exacerbated his situation at Rangers by making an unauthorised appearance on talkSPORT last Friday, during which he labelled Warburton’s initial decision to banish him from the training ground for the remainder of last week as ‘strange’. Warburton kept quiet on the Barton issue at yesterday’s media conference, but insisted he would not prevent players from speaking openly in the dressing room. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘You can’t have one of the bedrocks of how you work in management and then change it. ‘I really encourage opinion. I like opinion. During analysis, I don’t want people just sitting there. ‘I’ve said many times that the better quality of communication, the better we will be as a team.’