Joey Barton has either an understated sense of humour or is in danger of
becoming a parody of himself. Sadly, I fear the latter. "On ability I walk in the squad," he informed his Twitter following. Which, if nothing else, has caused a certain amount of amusement for the players who are actually here.
Perhaps Roy Hodgson paid too much notice to that pesky statistic that Barton made more inaccurate passes, 490, in the opposition half than any other Premier League player last season. Or maybe the England manager noted Barton's pass-completion rate was 74.94% - 49th out of 54 English midfielders.
"I shouldn't really be surprised," Hodgson told me. "At the moment it's
about Rio Ferdinand. Maybe if Joey Barton had a bigger following, we'd be debating that next week."
And then he smiled. "I'm not convinced his following will give me the same grief ..."
De statsa der viser hvilken drittsesong han har hatt. "On ability I walk in the squad." Tror ikke det..
