Joey Barton

[Muddled]

I think he meant that the all Meireles's 5 league goals, came in 5 games during his purple patch

I think it's important players step up at times when team-mates can't.

Berbatov started off well, then went off the boil - Rooney stepped up to the plate. Mix Hernandez every now and then when neither were firing and Man Utd have goal threats throughout the season.

If Meireles scores five in five, excellent - but he's still scored five, you can then judge him on his performances throughout the season as a whole and who then steps up to the plate? Kuyt.

Meireles has done well in his first season in the Premiership. Granted he's not a bruiser and I question his physical controbution to a game, but he does have it in him to score goals. Barton gets the assists from a floated delivery not too disimilar to Pennant when aiming for Carroll and bags a few from the spot. Meh.

[Muddled]

I was responding to another poster about the use of Stats.

Apologies, meant he had scored 5 goals, not 6.

No need to apologise, I must have read it out of context.

I've gone on to explain my rationale between scoring goals in gluts, or spread out over the season above.

[danperkins]

I think it's important players step up at times when team-mates can't.

Berbatov started off well, then went off the boil - Rooney stepped up to the plate. Mix Hernandez every now and then when neither were firing and Man Utd have goal threats throughout the season.

If Meireles scores five in five, excellent - but he's still scored five, you can then judge him on his performances throughout the season as a whole and who then steps up to the plate? Kuyt.

Meireles has done well in his first season in the Premiership. Granted he's not a bruiser and I question his physical controbution to a game, but he does have it in him to score goals. Barton gets the assists from a floated delivery not too disimilar to Pennant when aiming for Carroll and bags a few from the spot. Meh.

Meireles had a golden month and he was fantastic, Kuyt has been excellent since January 10 goals 6 assists according to the stats, he was inconcsistent first half of the season for sure.

But i do see your point mate, a goal is a goal regardless, suppose it's like people saying Baines,Young & Adam get alot of their production from set pieces, true but their still getting it, so valid point

IMO Meireles has had a mixed bag in his first season here and has struggled at times, been played out of position aswell. Hopefully he can push on being fully adjusted to the premier league and over us more, even if he is a squad player he could be a very valuable one at that

[Neil Young]

Barton & Meireles are two completely different players IMO

Even their names are different.

[Muddled]

Meireles had a golden month and he was fantastic, Kuyt has been excellent since January 10 goals 6 assists according to the stats, he was inconcsistent first half of the season for sure.

But i do see your point mate, a goal is a goal regardless, suppose it's like people saying Baines,Young & Adam get alot of their production from set pieces, true but their still getting it, so valid point

IMO Meireles has had a mixed bag in his first season here and has struggled at times, been played out of position aswell. Hopefully he can push on being fully adjusted to the premier league and over us more, even if he is a squad player he could be a very valuable one at that

Yeah, a mixed bag is a fair assessment.

He looked isolated and lost under Roy, especially when shunted out to the flanks. He then seemed to find some form under Kenny when played just behind the striker, but then drifted out wide again, as Kuyt started moving more central. Tied in with injuries, tiredness and finding his feet in a new league, he's worthy of a squad place.

I think the best way to look at it, is when people draw up there fantasy line-ups for next season ... not many people have Meireles in that team.

[Rudo]

Yeah, a mixed bag is a fair assessment.

He looked isolated and lost under Roy, especially when shunted out to the flanks. He then seemed to find some form under Kenny when played just behind the striker, but then drifted out wide again, as Kuyt started moving more central. Tied in with injuries, tiredness and finding his feet in a new league, he's worthy of a squad place.

I think the best way to look at it, is when people draw up there fantasy line-ups for next season ... not many people have Meireles in that team.

Yeah i would agree with all that and your posts previously about Meireles.

Certainly think he's worth a place in the squad for next season, hes shown enough flashes of quality and promise to warrant that.
Not like Aquilani who just didn't cut it from the off - fair enough he was coming back from injury but even still, to me he's just not up to it in the Premier League.
A very talented footballer no doubt, but not for the PL.

We'll have to see how Meireles reacts to more competition next season. It'll either make him up his game or shatter his confidence totally. He's an experienced International so you'd like to think he'll thrive with extra competition for places.
Hopefully we see a stronger and more consistent Meireles next season.

[badpiggy]

I really like this article about Barton (probably because it disses Gareth Barry, a player I never got and still don't get, not least because he's the reason Xabi left us (bite anyone???)

No exclamation marks needed when gift of the gob says it all
By Dion Fanning


Sunday April 10 2011

R oberto Mancini's defence of Gareth Barry may well have proved whatever point Joey Barton was making last week.

As always, it is impossible to detect a flaw in Barton's reasoned analysis, especially when his brutal honesty is directed outwards rather than overlooking whatever warrants for his arrest might have been issued recently.

Barton gave his interview to So Foot, the French magazine which recently stitched Stephen Ireland up by asking him questions and then printing the answers. Barton has made no attempt so far to distance himself from his interview as Ireland did.

That doesn't really seem like Barton's style and if he was to get involved and issue some corrections and clarifications, he would probably only do so to stress that some point could have been made a bit more strongly rather than take something back.

He will have upset the great pillars of the English game with his comments and he will have upset Gareth Barry who has become one of the established players in the England team while not doing very much at all.

Mancini's defence of Barry only confirmed Barton's claim that "he's like the guy who sits in the front row and listens to the teacher. I certainly don't lose any sleep when I play against him."

His manager praised Barry by saying he was a "fantastic" player who "does not speak back", something that would appear to be important to Mancini after working with Craig Bellamy. Barton was getting at a deeper truth when he spoke of how Barry had "a very good agent". There is always an assumption when players are bought by big clubs or a club spends a lot of money on somebody that the people know what they're doing.

Most of the time, they don't. They are swayed by good agents, persuasive headlines and other factors so that one player can be ignored and another prosper.

The very best, like Arsene Wenger in his prime, take advantage of the herd mentality, but most are willing to join the auction.

Barton's violent past has understandably shaped his reputation. Yet when he punches Morten Gamst Pedersen in the chest, it is reported as if Barton had engaged in some sort of medieval butchery on the football field. There is a strange desensitising process going on as many incidents are covered in the media. In sensationalising a story, newspapers are in danger of making the stories less interesting. Everybody wants a "war of words" so when Giovanni Trapattoni says Kevin Doyle is among those players who is tired after a long Premier League season, this is presented to Mick McCarthy as a criticism of his club and McCarthy then "hits back".

This is not a culture exclusive to journalists. Journalists are always being hit with libel actions in which lawyers will insist that the words written meant something else, something worse. "No," the journalist should say, "if I meant to say those things you say I said, I would have written them."

Barton's interview was more interesting than some of the screaming headlines, although given that one of them screamed 'I am not a whore!', and this was a direct quote from the interview, for once it was a close-run thing.

A punchy headline cannot do justice to Barton's wide-ranging dissection of his life and his failure to be appreciated in England. Yet shrieking is deemed necessary even when Barton's words need no added emphasis.

Again, Barton's words get so much attention because amid all the noise, most of the time nobody is saying anything at all.

English football has many failings as Tottenham demonstrated on Tuesday night. A team dependent on the best of British talent ended the night doing what England always does best: searching for a scapegoat.

Of course, there were plenty of candidates as Aaron Lennon's fever took him down in the tunnel and Peter Crouch demonstrated that it is not always intelligence that is lacking in English footballers, it is temperament.

I know of one manager who always hesitates before buying an English player because he believes "English players are stupid". If he was watching on Tuesday, he would have felt Lennon and Crouch were confirming everything he felt.

In the Sky studio, Jamie Redknapp tried to add foreigners to the rap sheet by saying they had somehow contributed to Crouch's sending off. Unless one of these lousy foreigners whispered in his ear "Jump around like a madman", it was hard to see what part they had played.

Jamie's father was off the hook as the scapegoats presented themselves. Madrid's first goal was the result of poor coaching rather than any scapegoat but that didn't matter.

Barton is conducting a noble crusade but there is part of him that demands scapegoats too. He excoriates the English mentality and its manifestation on the football field. Barton appears to have grown tired of apologising for his brutal attack on Ousmane Dabo. "He started it and I finished it," was the stark verdict last week.

Yet he wants to be forgiven too which is normal and, when he isn't, he also looks for someone to blame. In Barton's case, it is Dabo who started it -- something Dabo denies -- and Dabo he can blame.

"I am a man. If someone hits me, I respond as a man. I am not a whore. Frankly, Ousmane is a little pussy. Where I come from, when you fight there is no rule. You fight 'til it's over."

Barton has made great efforts to distance himself from the reflex actions picked up where he came from. He takes responsibility for most of the things -- like prison -- that have landed him in trouble.

Barton receives little encouragement from the establishment so he is free to speak the truth as he sees it. That Gareth Barry and the rest see it differently is all the encouragement he needs.

[Rudo]

^^^ good article and very true.

Here's another one along the same lines:


When is a shocking tackle involving Joey Barton not a shocking tackle

By Brian Reade
Published 23:30 20/05/11

One of the worst fouls of the season was committed during Sunday’s Chelsea v Newcastle game.

A midfielder went straight through the back of another midfielder, studs up, in what looked like a venomous, pre-mediated attack.

I was amazed he escaped a sending-off, and even more astonished that the potential leg-breaker wasn’t shown on Match Of The Day 2 or highlighted in any media reports on the game.

I can only assume this was because the one committing the assault was clean-cut ex-public schoolboy Frank Lampard and the one receiving it was council-estate thug Joey Barton.

Because had the boots been on the other feet, not only would Barton have walked but we’d have seen that challenge a dozen times by now, accompanied by calls for six-game bans and moral lectures about scumbags never changing their spots.

Ain’t life grand?

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/opinion/columnists/brian-reade/Brian-Reade-column-When-is-a-shocking-tackle-involving-Joey-Barton-not-a-shocking-tackle-and-why-Hawksbee-Jacobs-are-in-tune-with-the-way-fans-really-feel-article738576.html

[Chrono]

I dont care what Barton does off the pitch

That's a very sad reality.

[cream]

Over on rawk, some bloke reckons Joey Barton is on his way to Liverpool.

[kris90210]

Be tamping if that were true! Easily one of the biggest arseholes in all of football. Decent player, but nowhere near good enough to justify his enormous 'cons' list.

[TheElephantMan]

I think Joey Barton is a terrific player, but he's a cunt - and I don't think he'd be welcomed by Liverpool supporters. Isn't he banned from the area anyway? Could be a bit of a problem for home matches! :-)

[Craig_H]

I think 'terrific' might be over-egging the pudding a little

[TheElephantMan]

I think 'terrific' might be over-egging the pudding a little

I admire him as a player, always have. I think some people overlook his ability because they don't like him.

[Craig_H]

Even taking aside his character, he's a decent midfielder without being that good. He's not in the England side, justifiably so, and it's not because of his character.