With Joey Barton facing a club record six-week fine, and the captain’s arm band long gone, Clive Whittingham and Chris King assess the way QPR have dealt with their errant player’s behaviour.
Clive Whittingham - One of the first ports of call for the disgruntled football fan outraged by the latest excesses of today’s professional players is to place the scandal in the context of the everyday work place. “I’d be sacked if I did that,” and “I’d get my P45 if I was this bad at my job” are regular 606 squeals – often with some merit but almost always missing the point that football isn’t like any other profession and to try and compare it with everyday careers is futile.
Only in football, for example, does a company which spends more than 150% of its annual turnover on staff wages alone win plaudits and trophies. In everyday business a company with such a ridiculous strategy goes bankrupt very quickly.
Sure, if Joey Barton worked in your office and one day he decided to pop over to a rival company’s headquarters under some minor provocation or other and deck one employee, kick another in the back of the knee and head butt a third then I imagine it’s a pretty safe bet he’d find his contract terminated. But then Joey Barton probably wouldn’t have been employed in your office in the first place, because in the real world CVs are poured over for holes and negatives whereas, in football, managers seem willing to overlook epilogues of poor behaviour and failure in favour of one positive which they hope will suddenly come to the fore and dominate despite being buried under mountains of shit for years.
The power of players in the modern game, and their union led be the ever-odious Gordon Taylor, means that footballers cannot be sacked. They can do pretty much whatever they like, and you cannot sack them: drink, smoke and snort coke; fight with other players, their own team mates and their manager; bring their club, team and profession into disrepute.
If clubs could sack players, then there is little doubt in my mind that QPR would have just done so with Joey Barton. This is a player with a previous record as long as his arm, signed in a bit of a last minute post-takeover panic last August and essentially given the keys to the castle with a four year contract on big money and the captain’s armband. He repaid the club for this with performances that were occasionally alright but mostly mediocre or worse, and two stupid sendings off in potentially crucial games – not to mention the Twitter comments, falling out of nightclubs at 5am and having a fight, etc.
The first sending off, against Norwich at Loftus Road, was reached in scandalous circumstances by the match officials who initially waved play on with QPR in possession suggesting they’d seen little wrong with his actions. But, even allowing for that, Barton still shouldn’t have got involved with Bradley Johnson at all and given them a decision to make. Likewise at City, had Barton hit the deck when Carlos Tevez struck him initially then it probably would have been the Argentinean sent off rather than the QPR captain. Two incidents that show Barton as being short tempered, stupid and loose cannon-like. Looking back over his career there is no suggestion that this sort of behaviour will not happen again.
I’ve seen a lot of comments about backing our man, giving him our support when he finally returns to action after a 12 match ban, moving on and forgetting what’s gone before and to be honest I laugh at the sheer fickleness of them. Ultimately the reason QPR stayed in the Premier League was because Bolton scored one too few at Stoke, or Stoke scored one too many. Had the Trotters got a third, or prevented Stoke’s second, at the Britannia Stadium on the final day of the season then QPR would be looking forward to a 46-game, second tier season beginning with an appetising trip to Burnley. Were that the case, I doubt Joey Barton would ever be able to set foot inside Loftus Road again. There’d be a hysterical lynch mob after him; threatening to tear up season tickets in the street and hang his effigy from lampposts should Rangers even consider playing him again. But because Bolton are crap, and only drew with Stoke, Joey’s alright after all and we should give him our full support.
But, by the same token, I find those who say we should just sack him and to hell with it rather amusing as well. It can’t be done.
It has been my opinion since Mark Hughes arrived that he would tolerate and indulge Barton for as long as he needed him in the team and then the first second he didn’t, he’d be out of the door – probably to West Ham to join another of life’s genuine arseholes Sam Allardyce for the second time in his career. The Manchester City debacle has robbed Hughes of that opportunity, because even that fat, uncultured oaf currently festering in the hot seat at Upton Park isn’t going to take Barton now given how he behaved and his 12 match ban for next season.
So QPR can sack him and no doubt find themselves embroiled in a costly, lengthy legal battle played out across the back page of the Evening Standard for the next 18 months. Or they can back him and act like nothing ever happened, welcoming him back into the team after his 12 match ban and risk alienating fans and other players. Or they can ostracise him from the club and the squad while still paying him his handsome weekly wage for the next four years, but having just got rid of Rowan Vine do they really want another situation like that on the balance sheet? To be honest, none of that sounds particularly productive.
What they have done is eminently sensible. They’ve managed to exceed the limited two-week fine and dock him six weeks of money, they’ve ended the ridiculous and divisive situation that saw him captaining the team, and they have created a situation whereby he can now be sacked if he strays again. Sadly, in the modern game, that really is the best QPR could have done in the circumstances.
Chris King - I would like to take this opportunity to applaud Queens Park Rangers for removing Joey Barton as club captain. Had it been me making the decision on the skipper’s future at Rangers, this would have been paragraph one in a 20-page document passing sentence on Barton’s crimes, which merit a far greater punishment.
On a day where QPR so nearly denied Manchester City the Premier League title, and won plaudits from many observers for coming from a goal down to lead 2-1 at a ground where no other side had won all season, one man took it upon himself to drag the club’s name through the mud.
On that day, and since, Barton has not had any excuse to support his actions. Had an 18-year-old lost his head at the Etihad Stadium and lashed out at three players, before taking to Twitter to vent at the world in the most unprofessional manner possible, he might be excused. The exuberance of youth can be forgiven, the lack of self-control of an adult cannot.
The 29-year-old is an absolute liability; the experience and paltry quality he adds in the centre of the park are entirely eclipsed by his self-centred nature and lack of respect for colleagues, the etiquette and rules of the game, and managers who place so much faith in somebody who is yet to live up to the hype he so readily creates.
Many a time this season, the captain has looked unfit to wear the shirt. He is a drain on resources, and a moral stain on the club. Not once have I been inspired watching Barton don the blue and white hoops and no amount of Nietzsche quotes, Smiths lyrics or repetition of the little boy lost act will convince me that one of football’s most notorious characters has any place at Loftus Road.
In the past, many sides have put up with the antics of star players because the value they add outweighs the problems they cause. This is true of Mario Balotelli and Wayne Rooney, formerly it was the case with Paolo Di Canio and Eric Cantona, and it could even be said to be the case with our own Adel Taarabt. It is not true for Barton, and fining the player six weeks’ wages and stripping him of the captaincy will not force a drastic change in Barton’s outlook, or behaviour. Since the announcement he has said himself, through Twitter naturally, that he’s not bothered about the fine.
A month or so ago I suggested placing the former skipper in the reserves for the entire season in order to teach him the value of humility and allow players who truly deserve a place in the starting line-up to have their chance. I stand by this. The club has acted with far too much leniency towards Barton, and although there is a clause allowing the R’s to release him should any further serious breaches of disciplinary be forthcoming, it still stands as a bit of a cop out.
One can only hope that Alejandro Faurlin is fit to start against Swansea City. He was the biggest loss for Rangers during the second half of the season, and left a gaping void in midfield which big money Barton could not fill. The two players couldn’t contrast more in style, ability, temperament, and personality.
Faurlin is a gentleman and a classy individual in everything he does. Barton is a thug who, were it not for the shirt on his back, would be arrested for some of his disgraceful antics. A family club can ill-afford to associate itself with an individual like this for much longer.
Tweet @loftforwords, @chriskking
Pictures – Action Images