Joey Barton

Joseph Anthony Barton (born 2 September 1982) is an English professional football manager and former player who played as a midfielder.

Barton made 269 appearances in the Premier League, including 130 for Manchester City; he was most recently the manager of League One side Bristol Rovers.

Barton was born and raised in Huyton, Merseyside.

He made his first appearance for Manchester City's under-17s team in 1999.

His first reserve-team appearance came at the end of the 2000–01 season, in his final year as a trainee.

Uncertain about Barton's future prospects, the club planned to release him, but reconsidered and gave him his first professional contract in the close season.

Over the next two years, he made the transition from the under-19s to regular reserve football.

He began his football career with Manchester City in 2002 after working his way through their youth system.

His appearances in the first team gradually increased over the following five years and he made more than 150 for the club.

He was promoted to the first-team squad in the 2002–03 season.

Barton would have made his debut for the City first team in November 2002 against Middlesbrough, had he not lost his shirt after leaving it on the substitutes bench at half-time.

He ended the 2002–03 season with a run of seven consecutive starts.

He eventually made his first-team debut for the club against Bolton Wanderers on 5 April 2003.

His first senior goal came two weeks later in a 2–0 win over Tottenham Hotspur on Good Friday.

After impressing in his first season at City, Barton was offered a new one-year contract at the club by manager Kevin Keegan, which he signed in April 2003.

He featured in the first team more regularly during the 2003–04 season and, following a second Premiership goal, was rewarded with a call-up to the England U21 squad for their 2004 European Championship qualifiers against Macedonia and Portugal.

An FA Cup match against Tottenham saw Barton receive the first red card of his career in unusual circumstances: at half-time, with his club 3–0 down, he argued with the referee and was sent off although the match was not in progress.

In the second half, despite playing with 10 men, Barton's teammates achieved an unlikely 4–3 victory.

He earned his only cap for the England national team in February 2007.

He joined Newcastle United for a fee of £5.8 million in July 2007.

On 20 May 2008, he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for common assault and affray during an incident in Liverpool city centre.

Barton served 74 days of this prison term, being released on 28 July 2008.

On 1 July 2008, he was also given a four-month suspended sentence after admitting assault occasioning actual bodily harm on former teammate Ousmane Dabo during a training-ground dispute on 1 May 2007.

This incident effectively ended his Manchester City career.

After four years with the club, he joined Queens Park Rangers in August 2011, from where he was loaned to Marseille in 2012.

He returned from his loan spell the following season, and helped QPR to promotion to the Premier League via the Championship play-offs.

QPR were relegated again, and Barton was released at the end of the season.

Barton has been charged with violent conduct three times by The Football Association: for the assault on Dabo, for punching Morten Gamst Pedersen in the stomach, and for attacking three players in the final game of the 2011–12 season where he got sent off against Manchester City.

Born in Huyton, Merseyside, Barton is the oldest of four brothers.

His parents separated when he was 14 years old and consequently he lived with his father at his grandmother's house on a different estate.

He has said that his grandmother's influence helped him to avoid getting caught up in a recreational drug culture and attributes his work ethic to his father.

His father, also named Joseph, worked as a roofer and played football semi-professionally for Northwich Victoria.

Barton enjoyed physical education at his school, St Thomas Becket, which he represented in various sports and was a talented rugby league prospect.

He left school with ten GCSEs.

Barton pursued his dreams of becoming a professional footballer by joining Everton's youth system, but played for Liverpool when he was 14.

He underwent trials at Nottingham Forest, but was rejected when it was decided he was too small to become a footballer.

Barton said his rejection by clubs only made him more determined to succeed as a footballer and prove his detractors wrong.

He signed a one-year deal to play for Burnley in 2015, helping them win promotion to the Premier League, but left to join Rangers in May 2016.

He was banned from football after admitting a Football Association charge relating to betting in April 2017, and upon its expiry in June 2018 commenced his managerial career with Fleetwood Town.

Barton's career and life have been marked by numerous controversial incidents and disciplinary problems and he has been convicted twice of violent crimes.