Vile comments about women’s sport, assault charges, and a feud with Jeremy Vine – just some of the Scan**ls former footballer has found himself embroiled in.
Barton was once best known as a midfielder for , but his off-pitch behaviour has garnered him a lot of attention – and criticism – in recent years.
From comparing female football pundits to serial killers to claiming that there ’’ on sports shows, Barton’s social media rants have been branded as racist, sexist, and misogynistic.
On Wednesday former England striker she suffered as a result of Joey Barton’s posts left her fearing for her safety and frightened to leave home.
And Barton is not just controversial for his online remarks.
The former Premier League player has served time in jail and has been charged with assault on several occasions.
Who is Joey Barton?
Barton, 41, is originally from Merseyside. He worked his way up through youth football before becoming a professional player for Manchester City in 2002.
Later in his career, he played for Newcastle United, Queens Park Rangers and Burnley. Barton also represented the England national team in 2007 but played just 12 minutes on the pitch.
In one notable moment from his football career, on the final day of the 2011-12 Premier League season, Barton was sent off for elbowing Carlos Tevez in the face.
Barton got a 12-game ban after kicking Sergio Aguero in the knee and attempting to headbutt Vincent Kompany.
Barton’s playing career came to an end in 2017, when he was given an 18-month ban for breaching betting rules.
He then embarked on a managing career, taking on the manager role at Fleetwood Town.
In 2021, he was appointed manager of Bristol Rovers. After three years, Barton was from the role after the team’s poor performance.
Does Joey Barton have a criminal record?
In 2008, Barton was jailed for assault and affray when he punched a man 20 times and attacked a teenager. He served 74 days of a six-month sentence.
Barton was also charged for an assault on fellow Manchester City player Ousmane Dabo in the same year. He was given a four-month suspended sentence.
In 2019, in his role as Fleetwood Town manager, Barton allegedly assaulted Barnsley manager Daniel Stendel after his team lost a match. He was charged with causing actual bodily harm, but was of the charge in 2021 after pleading not guilty.
Barton was cleared of his wife, Georgia. Barton allegedly pushed and kicked the then-35-year-old in a row in June 2021.
Social media comments and controversy
Barton’s tirades on X have repeatedly sparked controversy, with social media users routinely condemning his racist and misogynistic comments.
Last week, Barton the ITV football pundits Eniola Aluko and Lucy Ward ‘the Fred and Rose West of football commentary’.
Fred and Rose West were murderers who Ki**ed at least twelve young women between 1967 and 1987.
Writing on X about Aluko, Barton also asked: ‘How is she even talking about Men’s football? She can’t even kick a ball properly.’
Aluko made 102 appearances for England’s national women’s team; Barton, on the other hand, spent just 12 minutes on the pitch during his time with the England side.
Aluko that she fled the country following the online abuse she suffered as a result of Barton’s posts.
‘It’s really important to say that online abuse has a direct impact on your safety and how you feel and how safe you feel in real life,’ Aluko said in a video on Instagram.
‘I’ve felt under threat this week. I’ve felt like something is going to happen to me.’
‘And I don’t say that for anyone to feel sorry for me – I say that for people to understand the reality and the impact that hate speech has, the impact that racism has, the impact that sexism has, the impact that misogyny has on all of us females in the game, in sports broadcasting,’ the former England striker added.
ITV called the comments ‘vindictive’ and ‘shameful’, adding that ‘football is for everyone’.
In another incident in December, Barton came under fire when he called England goalkeeper Mary Earps ‘a big sack of spuds’ who plays for ‘a girls team’. He then declared that to be named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Barton was also slammed when he claimed that there ’’ on football shows in a now-deleted tweet.
X users dubbed it a ‘transparent and desperate plea for attention’ and an attempt at landing an ‘I was cancelled’ job on GB News by a man who knows his career in football is done.
Many said the UK would be better off if it simply ignored Barton’s comments, while others declared him to be having ‘the most public midlife crisis in human history’.
Is Jeremy Vine suing Joey Barton?
The feud between Barton and television and radio presenter Jeremy Vine started when Vine commented on Barton’s social media outbursts.
‘What’s going on with @Joey7Barton?’ Vine asked in one tweet, speculating that the former Premier League footballer could have ‘’.
Barton hit back: ‘Stop talking about me on your s****y show’. He later called Vine a ‘pedo defender’ and a ‘bike nonce’.
In a since-deleted tweet, Barton claimed that Vine is and attached a photograph of a pre-action letter warning of a claim for defamation and harassment.
Joey Barton and Stuart Andrew
Sports minister Stuart Andrew recently condemned Barton’s posts on social media.
Andrew said that the posts were ‘dangerous comments that open the floodgates for abuse’. He added that they were ‘not acceptable’.
Andrew made the comments during an inquiry into women’s sport by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
When asked by Labour MP Julie Elliott if he would intervene and discuss the issue with social media platforms, Andrew said he would ‘happily do so’. He added that he would write to X and Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram.
Barton responded to Andrew’s comments with inviting the MP on to his podcast, alongside an image of a George Orwell quote reading ‘we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men’.
