UF Footy Felons Top Trumps: Joey Barton

So we started this series last summer, full of excitement to do so, and proceeded to manage just one before the whole thing fell apart. Some sort of Norwichomon-esque breakdown by yours truly was mostly to blame.

But, we're back, and eager to kickstart it to help pass the offseason. Because if we don't, we might resort to murder in the 1st degree upon hearing fresh Xabi Alonso transfer conjecture.

If you've never played Top Trumps before, check out the original post and this handy link.

Once you're up to speed, hit the jump for our next character in the series. Collect 'em all and have yourselves a good old time!

JOEY BARTON, Midfield (Manchester City, Newcastle United)
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When you think of miscreants in soccer, those whose tremendous ability to destroy usurps their ability to create, your mind invariably settles on Joey Barton, the midfielder who just can't keep himself out of trouble.

At only 26, there's still plenty of time for him to atone for the massive resume of transgressions and foul play, but we all know which direction he'll continue to head.

Forget the fact that when bothered, he can actually play a decent central midfield, reducing any opponent's No. 10 to a quivering pile of fear and self-doubt. It's all about what he does away from the 90 minutes on a weekend (although there are plenty of red cards to be discussed there, if we're honest).

There's the injuring of teammate Ousmane Dabo in training, an act so vicious that the FA actually stepped in to issue charges of violent conduct. There's the Citeh christmas party back in 2004, where his joviality extended to his cigar ending up in the eye of a reserve team player, resulting in permanent scarring.

Or how about the prison sentence for beating the stuffing out of a teenager outside a Liverpool McDonald's?

Or the time he assaulted a 15-year-old Everton fan during a preseason tour to Thailand?

Or his hit-and-run that left a pedestrian with a broken leg?

Essentially, Barton is a man without a nation, a hard man without a haven to protect him. Vinnie Jones could always count on the equally imbalanced charm of the entire Wimbledon squad to deflect too much negative press, while thugs from the 60s and 70s like Batista or Claudio Gentile had the fortune of playing the game in an era where a swift kick to the nuts was allowed, and in some ways quietly encouraged.

After all, if we've learned anything from the rat race mentality, it's that sometimes, you need to use foul means to level the playing field and keep the superstars in check.

Now, in the increasingly sterile modern soccer world, in which physical contact and intent have been regulated and agonized over to such a degree that an ankle tap can get you a red card if done from behind, Joey Barton is all alone, the pariah with the bad attitude and even worse timing, and it's not undeserved in the slightest.

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Gary Megson Cares Not for Self Respect

Stupid Fucking Bolton manager Gary Megson wants to prove that if you can kick a football there is no limit to how shitty of a human being you can be. Translation: yeah, they might sign Joey Barton

The manager confirmed "an interest in Newcastle's rebellious midfielder."

Johnny Lydon was rebellious. Barton is worthless scum.

In May of last year, Barton was sentenced to six months after beating the shit out of a bystander outside of a Liverpool McDonald's (disturbing video here). While he was serving 77 days of that sentence he was given a four month suspended sentence after he admitted to assaulting former teammate Ousmane Dabo during training.

Still, Barton was allowed to return to play in the EPL (suck it, Barclays) for the '08-'09 campaign. He made his season debut as a second half sub against Arsenal and had been on the pitch all of about 30 seconds when he tried to put his foot through Samir Nasri's femur.

Barton's Wikipedia page must be edited by his mom as it laughingly described the incident thusly: "Shortly into this return game, Barton was involved in an incident with Samir Nasri, putting in a hard but fair challenge, for which the referee did not give a foul."

That's because the ref didn't see it.

Earlier this month, Barton took out Xabi Alonso with a two-footed, studs-up tackle that drew a straight red. Newcastle manager Alan Shearer subsequently suspended Barton indefinitely and told him to stay away from the relegation-threatened club.

Barton is worthless. Megson just lost any respect he might have garnered from us for making Stupid Fucking Bolton seem less stupid and guiding them to a place where they're not even in the relegation picture with a month left on the schedule.

Oh, Blackburn Rovers and Sam Allardyce might also be interested in Barton, be we already didn't care much for Big Fat Sam

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Abby Wambach Likes Joey Barton's Style

This man is a muppet. Seriously, what is with the hair?

Joey Barton is, shall we say, rambunctious both on and off the pitch. He is generally considered to be one of, if not the, largest douchebags and classless players in the EPL (suck it, Barclay's! see, we're classy too). Amazingly, however, he has only been sent off 4 times in his entire career. How is that even possible? After the jump, his latest shenanigans, and why Abby Wambach loves him.

Already down 2-0, in the 77th minute of the match, with Xabi Alonso stuck on the endline, Joey Barton decided to come in up with both studs up for a tackle (skip to the 7:15 mark in the video).

Not surprisingly, gaffer Alan Shearer, already under fire for (likely) being unable to save Newcastle from relegation, was not happy with little Joey's antics and has fined him £120,000.

'The referee was spot on showing him a straight red card, and I agree with the decision completely. We will be without Joey for the rest of the season now and I’m not happy at all.'

Apparently, Abby Wambach had been watching the Liverpool-Newcastle tilt, because she thought Joey Barton had a great idea. Immediately after the restart (her club, the Washington Freedom, had just scored their 2nd goal) Wambach came crashing into Saint Louis Athletica forward Daniela, who already had 2 goals in the match (skip to the 2:00 mark in the video for the tackle).


Find more videos like this on Women's Professional Soccer

Wambach claimed that she slipped just as she went in for the tackle, but considering that Daniela was abusing her club one has to wonder. Considering that Wambach missed the 2008 Olympics due to her own broken leg, you would think she would be a little more cautious. Her fellow US National Team players weren't so sure that she slipped either, with both Hope Solo and Lori Chalupny (who obviously both play for the Athletica) questioning her decision to come into the tackle studs-up. That's gonna be awkward in training!

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Barton out! (For six games)

Joey Barton will miss six matches as punishment for his training ground attack on former teammate Ousmane Dabo. He will be available for return on October 25, against Sunderland. Barton will have to be on his best behavior (HA!) afterward, as he faces another six game ban for future indiscretions.

After the jump, video highlights of some of Barton's best moments

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Damn It Feels Good to be Joey Barton

Bushwick Bill, formerly of Geto Boys (below)

Ousmane Dabo, formerly of Manchester City (right)

Pick out the Barton victim from the two...

In a stunning development this morning, a professional football player was, for reasons financial and competitive, allowed to keep his place in a team despite a recent assault conviction and subsequent incarceration.

Going against the bedrock moralistic and global tradition of treating pro athletes the same as your average work-a-day hump, Newcastle United Football Club have reinstated Joey Barton. The McDonald's Mauler was let go on a free transfer from Strangeways prison on Monday.

Newcastle officials and owner Mike Ashley had entertained thoughts of letting Barton leave, releasing, or selling him, but were ultimately made to understand that the midfielder was owed another chance, along with £65,000 per week (unless they were willing to sell him at a 50% loss.)

So now with the provision that he limit his ass-baring antics to one, 90-minute period each matchday, and not beat his teammates to near blindness during training, Barton will carry on his delightfully entertaining career with the Geordies and King Kev.

All smiles then, it would seem, but for the corporate crypto-fascists at Nike HQ in Cambodia, Oregon. Those tree-hugging babykillers have ditched young Joey, cutting him off from a lifeblood £40,000 per annum, or less than 2/3 what NFC pays him every seven days.

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Joey Barton jailed. England's long national nightmare over

Joey Barton has been sentenced to six months in jail for assault stemming from two separate incidents in one night last December. Barton, out with some of his loutish family, drank 10 pints and five cans of lager. That's what I refer to as a "blackout amount" of beer. Unsurprisingly, Barton ran into trouble, this time at a McDonald's, and now has to pay for his transgressions.

Barton, already used to wearing jail stripes

On December 27, Barton was arrested for instigating two one-sided fights. The first occurred after arguing with a group of youths. Since Britain is awash with CCTV cameras, the entire incident was recorded. Barton knocked

an unidentified man to the ground. He then straddled him and punched him four or five times as his cousin threw food at the victim before the Premier League player punched him up to 15 times more.

Awesome. But our boy Joey wasn't done for the night. A couple of minutes later, Barton went after a 16 year-old. Barton left the scene after breaking several of the youth's teeth.

I don't know what you do when you go out, but damn, that's a full night out. Hell, I would not be surprised if the night didn't at least feature an attempted rape on that fetching cousin of his. Okay, I apologize. That's going too far. Joey would have paid her.

So now, Joey's got six months to think about what he has done wrong. Also, he has to pony up $5000 to the kid whose teeth he broke. Considering that he probably makes that amount during his overnight sleep, I don't think he will be that bothered.

One thing that Barton should strive for is getting along with his new jailmates. Unless he plans to find out the hard way that if you stab your cellmate, you can't just get transferred to a new jail and start over.

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Joey Barton's relatives prepare to sliding tackle some jail time

Some of you know Joey Barton as the misunderstood midfielder whose no-nonsense style of sound-bitery and media management gets in the way of some extremely raw talent. Some of you know him as the angry idiot who punches up punters on the way home from the pubs.

Well, today Joey got some good news and bad news. The good news: he escaped a ban from the FA for his alleged punch-up with Shawn Moloney on Saturday. The bad news: his cousins are heading to jail.

Kevin Corke and Carl Taylor stabbed and shot a man on Merseyside in a revenge attack, after the victim, Tommy Harrison, had "humiliated" Corke in a fistfight earlier on. Corke was jailed for life after admitting to the murder, and Taylor was given a five-year sentence for manslaughter.

How are the two related to Barton? Corke and Taylor are half-brothers, and also cousins of Joey's half-brother Michael, who's ALSO in jail with a 17-year sentence for a particularly vicious murder [read the link].

It's a tangled web worthy of soap operas or Inside Edition, but when you look at Joey's family life, is it any bloody wonder that he's kicking, punching and strangling players on the pitch?

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How Do You Say "I told you so" in Geordie?

Mikael Silvestre is a man who speaks his mind. Not that you would know, since no one pays attention to him. But during the Christmas holiday, Silvestre tracked down Jack Bell of The New York Times, dragged him up to his hotel room and told him how he was right to reject a move to Newcastle last summer because of Joey Barton, what with Barton's latest run-in with the law (he's free at last!).

You see, Barton's sparring partner Ousmane Dabo is a good friend of Silvestre's. It just wouldn't have been right to join a club that had just signed Barton. Even if that meant giving up the chance to play for a perennial underachiever with no chance of playing Champions League football, and whose defense is struggling to fill Titus Bramble's oversized clown shoes.

In Barton's defense, he didn't attack his own teammate this time, and he managed to keep his cigarette butt out of his victim's eyes. Baby steps.

Though we do have to wonder, what's with Newcastle's obsession with the criminally-inclined? Lest we forget, Craig Bellamy logged some jail time at Tyneside, while Lee Bowyer went a whole season without attacking any Asian students, but still managed to get in an on-field brawl with teammate Kieron Dyer, who himself was one of two, ur, unnamed Premiership players questioned the roasting scandal of 2003. Maybe Newcastle can follow the example of Chelsea and the New York Giants, and have some sort of exchange program with the Cincinnati Bengals.

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In other news: the sky is blue, Maradona loved cocaine, and Ronaldo is fat

Dear, oh dear. Joey Barton's in trouble again! From the BBC:

The court was told that CCTV operators tracked Mr Barton and a group of his friends in Church Street at 0530 GMT on Thursday.

A confrontation was said to have taken place in a McDonald's restaurant.

The player, of Widnes, Cheshire, was outside when an unknown man made a gesture towards him.

Gwyn Lewis, defending, said he was the victim of a "great deal of provocation" and was being "goaded" in the street.

When will he ever learn? I've grown oddly fond of his miscreant behaviour over the years, because amid the violence and lack of self-control, he'll occasionally say something quite profound.

In 2004, he started a brawl during a friendly pre-season game with minnows Doncaster Rovers. Over christmas of the same year, he started a fight at his own club's Christmas party, where he stubbed out a cigar in a teammate's eye. He punched a 15-year-old in the face while Man City was on tour in Thailand. He fought another teammate during pre-season training sessions in early 2007, detaching Ousmane Dabo's retina. [I would argue that Dabo's injury surely couldn't make him much worse as a player]

Add to that a string of arrests for assault, criminal damage and even an incident where he broke a pedestian's leg while driving his car through Liverpool, and you have a soccer player trying to emulate the likes of PacMan Jones and Elijah Dukes.

That being said, his comments in the wake of England's exit from the 2006 World Cup were spot-on.

"England did nothing in that World Cup, so why were they bringing books out? 'We got beat in the quarter-finals. I played like shit. Here's my book'."

Can't fault brutal honesty like that, even if it comes packaged in his diminutive, trouble-causing frame. Sure, it rubbed the primadonnas of the England squad [I'm looking at you, Lampard] the wrong way, but that's sorely needed from time-to-time.

When it's all said and done, Joey Barton is a square peg in a round world. Misunderstood, and he simply doesn't fit. Let's at least hope the rest of his long and promising career is filled with more quality tidbits like these.

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