Presumably, Marseille fans are staring at YouTube this morning in open-mouthed horror: “That’s Joey Barton?”
This is the right move at the right time for Barton, because he needs to get out of England and concentrate on playing – without all the baggage which accompanies him in this country. In the Premier League, he’ll always just be the guy who nearly blinded Jamie Tandy. Whether that’s fair or not is irrelevant, that’s the reality.
His treatment at the hands of QPR isn’t quite as unreasonable as the player has conveyed it to be, after all, he was always going to be left holding the bag for what happened last season. Rangers spent a lot employing Barton, gave him the captain’s armband, and he was distinctly underwhelming on the pitch. Add that up with all the extracurricular issues that he was indirectly associating the club with, and it’s no surprise that Mark Hughes and Tony Fernandes wanted to cut the cord. If Barton is to be believed, then yes, maybe the process by which they did that could have been neater and more respectful, but ultimately it’s incidental – he was always going to be leaving, one way or another.
Football world is essentially one big country, so it’s no longer possible to arrive in a new league with a clean slate – but moving to Ligue 1 is as close to a fresh start as Barton is ever going to get. It’s time he got back to being a football player, rather than just the pantomime villain he’ll always be cast as in the Premier League.
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He’ll still be a nusciance in Ligue 1 :/