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£1 Million Payoff Gets Barton To Walk … But Eventually He’ll Talk

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Sevco and Joey Barton have concluded the deal that will allow him to leave Ibrox with bulging pockets, including a cool £1 million in cold, hard cash.

So much for eight weeks money, the deal which the Daily Record touted and said was virtually a done deal.

Perhaps it was, but that was before the leaking of his medical records, and before The Record itself gave the hammer one last mighty swing with a petty, snide attack yesterday which hardened attitudes even more and probably stuck £200,000 on the player’s demands.

With friends like that, who needs Mike Ashley court cases to keep you up at night, eah?

Barton clearly anticipates finding a club quickly, which means he’s got himself an even sweeter deal than we imagined, and all credit has to go to his advisors for getting this for him. It helps, of course, if you’re dealing with absolute goons who can’t conduct their business in a professional manner and so allow you to hold every card in the deck.

The settlement details haven’t been published in the media, but then there was no need for them to be as they were leaked to the clued up and well respected blogger Johnjames, who has one finally shock in store for the Sevco fans who thought that once the deal was done the club could move on and they’d hear no more about it.

The deal won’t include a non-disclosure agreement.

I’m pretty stunned at that, I’ve got to admit. Because if you were in the club’s shoes you’d definitely want one of those. That they didn’t get it shows just how weak their hand was sitting across the table from the player and his advisors for the last time.

Now, Barton can’t talk immediately; under the terms of the deal he’s not free to until he’s been paid the final sum in the settlement.

At that point, however, all bets are off. Once the last of the money is in the bank – and according to JJ it’s on a payment schedule which Barton has agreed and confirmed to the English FA, who will make sure it’s met – he’s freed from any constraints whatsoever and then he’ll be telling all of it, from the way he was treated to what actually happened in that dressing room. Everyone will get it in the neck, including the hacks.

Of course, the way the deal is staggered means that it won’t come out until the close-season. Which is the one concession the club appears to have got. By then I don’t anticipate Warburton still being there. Perhaps King will have gone with him.

But I do believe there’s a hell of a lot more going on here than a mere dressing room dispute, and the full story will be of immense interest when we finally find out what it is.

The deal has officially been announced on the club’s website, and although they are saying neither party will discuss the particulars we should all anticipate that it’ll be heavily spun, with the media trying to make it look like the club “won” this, as if tearing up the contract of your marquee summer signing can ever be any kind of victory.

But they reckoned without the Bampots; I’m sure JJ won’t mind being labelled as one!

He has good Ibrox sources, and his article confirms what Phil said yesterday about Barton’s people flatly refusing the deal as it was originally offered, and about deep reservoirs of anger over the club’s quite deranged decision to leak his medical information to the press.

As I thought, that put the club in deadly peril of serious legal consequences; it is little wonder the deal has been closed, to Barton’s satisfaction, as quickly as it has.

What a shambles this lot are.

If they had conducted their business in a sober, sensible, serious fashion instead of trying to put pressure on this guy via the media, instead of trying to publicly humiliate him – and quite what he did to deserve that is one of the things we should all be interested in finding out – they could have settled this for a fraction of the cost, quietly, with everyone spared the circus.

Obviously, this story isn’t finished yet but to the relief of many people (you know who you are haha!) this will be one of the last posts on the subject.

It’s been entertaining though!

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