Joey Barton couldn’t have picked a better time to get suspended from Rangers.
The 34-year-old midfielder releases his autobiography “No Nonsense” on Thursday, and will have plenty of time to promote it after being suspended from his club for three weeks following a dispute with teammates and coaching staff.
In an interview to promote the book, Barton made a pitch to be England manager.
The midfielder’s logic appears to be that he can’t do any worse than Roy Hodgson or current manager Sam Allardyce, and that he is, in his opinion, certainly a better bet than his former manager at Queens Park Rangers, Mark Hughes.
“Let’s look at who is doing the key roles,” Barton says in an interview with The Daily Mail.
“Sam Allardyce is England manager. Well, am I a better player than Sam? Well, yeah, of course. Do I believe, if Sam can get to be England manager then I can? Of course I do. What’s Sam got that I haven’t got?”
The obvious answer to that question would appear to be years of experience as a manager, but Barton continued to disparage the qualities of other managers, particularly Hughes.
“I look at Roy Hodgson in the England job and look at the way he handled it. Surely even you think you could have done a better job.
“And I look at other managers. Mark Hughes is a terrible manager. Stoke are bottom of the league. I thought his people skills were really, really poor. My trade is football. All I’ve ever known is football. I watch as much football as anybody. I care about football as much as anybody.”
Barton played under Hughes at QPR during the 2011/12 season, when the club narrowly avoided relegation to the Championship. Barton received a 12-match ban for his part in an altercation with Manchester City players on the final day of the season.
The 34-year-old previously said Stoke manager Hughes was responsible for QPR being relegated the following year, and accused him of “trying to get away from the truth.”
