Joey Barton spoke with the media about his retirement as a player the other day.
Funny, because I thought he retired ages ago.
In fact, he didn’t retire so much as he was retired.
We all know where. We all know when. The amazing thing is, he appears not to.
He took a lot of criticism on Twitter after his comments about how he went out at the top, playing against the biggest names in the EPL. He is probably the first player in history to retreat from our top flight and find solace in the big money English league.
I reckon that since he clearly needs reminding of how things went for him up here that they should do a movie about his experiences in the SPL. Call it “Jailbird Joey: A Scottish Football Comedy For The Ages. Because most of us sure did find it funny.
I am not the kind of person who would ask someone to do something I wasn’t prepared to do myself.
I will not take a stab at the script, but I will take a shot at the outline.
This is my effort at showing Film Scotland how it could be done, and it must be done.
Because his is the ultimate tale of hubris and nemesis – my favourite theme of the month.
I wrote about it in relation to King the other day … Joey’s story can be seen more clearly because it is complete. It is the perfect encapsulation of the rise and the fall. It’s what happens when someone runs off at the mouth and can’t deliver on the verbals.
Enjoy it this time as much as we did when the true events were unfolding.
Jailbird Joey: A Brief Backstory
The backstory usually does not form part of an outline, unless it is uncovered later in exposition or in flashbacks.
As I’m not writing the screenplay I’ll leave that to someone else to decide how much of this to use, but the backstory is essential to an understanding of the rest of the plot. Because what a backstory this chap has, including the genesis of his nickname “Jailbird Joey.”
So called because he has, in fact, spent time in the jail for basically being a neddish hooligan, Barton arrived in Scotland as a known thug who famously even had a punch-up with one of his own team-mates whilst a game was going on.
An embarrassing number of violent incidents on and off the pitch had blighted his career, and with two criminal assault convictions to his name, he is perfectly cast as the villain of this piece.
But of course, the Barton backstory isn’t limited to that.
Unusually for a boot-boy, Barton is well-read and reasonably articulate. He is not an intellectual, don’t make that mistake – one he frequently does make – but he’s smarter than the average … ahem bear. Which is part of why we all found it so strange that he wanted to move to Ibrox in the first place.
Because Barton was well-known for his Celtic sympathies. Indeed, he went much further than just expressing affections for our club. He was a vocal supporter of Irish Republicanism to boot and one of those who thought the whole “Queen and country” thing was a load of old bollocks. When he blipped on the radar as a Mark Warburton target most people excepted him to be completely disinterested in the move … but how wrong we all were.
Before long he was tweeting about how the challenge excited him, and confidently predicting that he would come up to Scotland and “boss” the whole league. Still, most people expected that a sudden hitch would bring the whole thing crashing down.
It didn’t. On 24 May the ego landed … big time.
The funniest few months in the recent history of Scottish football had begun.
The Media And Sevconia In Raptures: The Signing
Every good story would have to start with the signing, and no version of that would be complete without casting the media in the role of Useful Idiots, and they were so embarrassing that it’s unbelievable.
I remember reading some of their commentary in near disbelief.
If Barton came across as an arrogant twat then they came across as being completely delusional.
Honestly, if you recall you’d have been forgiven for believing Sevco had signed a world class player at the height of his powers instead of a 33 year old ned with a reputation for thuggishness that went far out in front of the one he had as a player.
There was fearsome competition for who could write the most sycophantic pro-Sevco claptrap, but anyone making the movie would have to find a way to shoe-horn the words of Richard Wilson, of the BBC, into the story somewhere because they are awesome.
“Barton has reinvented himself; in a shorthand way, he has gone from CCTV footage of fighting to being a guest on Question Time. So nobody ought to be surprised that on the verge of a return to the English Premier League, and all its riches and glamour, Barton has chosen to sign for (Sevco) … Barton’s previous comments, and his prior indiscretions, are not relevant to his arrival at Ibrox. His performances … will carry far greater weight, and on the evidence of last season Barton remains a player capable of influence.”
Aside from this sort of claptrap, how many outlets took Barton to be the player of the year?
Almost all of them. Nearly every sportswriter of repute thought he would walk it. Sitting there at the press conference, having all the honey poured in his ear about how brilliant he was, and reading the absolutely barking coverage he was getting any man might have gotten a big head.
But this guy … he was an egomaniac before all that. He coped as we all thought that he might.
Everything went to his head … big time.
Barton The Big Mouth: Talking The Talk
Even before Jailbird Joey had kicked a ball in anger up here, he was talking the talk.
And no player who’s ever come to Scottish football talked the talk to his extent. We have had genuinely world class players up here, guys who’s egos could easily have run amuck, but nobody who was ever quite so mouthy as this big-headed twat.
Which brought with it trouble of course, because as a result, every player in the league wanted to take a piece of him and the simple fact is that he made it easy.
If you were going to make the movie you would only need to highlight one series of moments; his notorious pre-season interviews with TalkSport, where he offered one of the most ridiculous hostages to fortune of any player I’ve ever witnessed when he said he would boss the game here.
“If I get to that level [his best] then, unfortunately for everyone up there, they will not be able to live with me,” he said.
Those words were to haunt him again and again.
But they were cake compared to the challenge he laid down to the best footballer in the country.
“He’s not even in my league,” he said of our captain. “He’s nowhere near the level of player I am. He can’t get near me. If I play well, Brown does not stand a chance.”
Scott Brown has been challenged before, but never so brazenly.
If you were a betting man, how much would you have put on the winner of that confrontation?
It was already being built-up as the “boss battle” of the story … and as anyone who goes to the movies knows, you need your game face on to win that.
Joey Makes His Debut … And That’s The Start Of The Slide.
The first time an audience would get an inkling that Jailbird Joey: The Movie is going to be about an enormous reversal was when the football actually started. Up until that point this could have been one of those movies where evil triumphs, subverting audience expectations; the schoolyard bully story where it’s the bully who’s still standing at the end.
But of course, from the moment he stepped onto the pitch for the first time in the SPL he was on the back foot.
If they were playing fair, any film-maker would have to focus, again, on the BBC’s coverage.
Because they actually had someone on hand to do a minute-by-minute accounting of his game. That article is up on their website to this day. It is full of praise for the handful of things he did right, but it crucially – incredibly – misses out the highlight of the match, when Ali Crawford, who bossed him all day long, nutmegs him. Quite how a minute-by-minute coverage failed to mention that salient detail, which is all most people remember about that game, is astonishing.
He was absolutely outplayed that day by Crawford and the rest of the Hamilton midfield, and based on what we know happened later it might be worth putting in some scenes of him moaning in the dressing room after the game about how nobody backed him up.
A few weeks later at Kilmarnock he was again bossed by a midfield where a 19 year Greg Kiltie absolutely destroyed him … and actually skinned him for Killie’s goal.
Off the field, there would need to be a scene of his notorious interview where he accused Brendan Rodgers of being all about “the tan and the teeth” and being in the midst of a mid-life crisis.
(An appropriate response to that would be to flash some images of him at his worst; brawling with his own players, snapping at refs, leaving court …)
At that point the media started to ask when he was going to start to play … and they were right to wonder, and they were right to be worried about his lack of impact, because next up was Celtic and the boss-battle with Brown.
Joey Gets A Whuppin’: Brown Wins The Showdown Hands Down
The Scott Brown showdown is clearly one of the most crowd pleasing moments of the movie; it is such a shame that the rules of narrative structure do not apply to real life. Because this is exactly what Fitz mourned in the final ever Cracker about 9/11; “first the Twin Towers, then the Pentagon and then Shanksville.”
Had 9/11 been executed like a movie, they’d have reversed the order to finish on the biggest possible bang.
Brown’s dominance of Barton is well out of sequence.
It comes at the end of Act 2 rather than at the end of Act 3 where it belongs.
You could change things, but then it wouldn’t make any sense in terms of the overall arc.
These things can’t be helped.
What a climax to the movie it would have been though; such was Brown’s dominance that day that Barton would have looked like a broken man at the end of it … except that it, too, was all out of sequence because he looked psychologically shattered before it even started.
Look at the picture atop this segment; that’s a man who’s already beaten.
Brown absolutely owns him in this game; that has to be reflected in the film.
Barton, lying on the deck, looking up, as Brown breezes past him would be a lovely way to articulate the dominance.
If you wanted to get all surreal you could do a fantasy-style sequence where Brown has taken Barton home and has him living in a wee dolls house like that great moment in The Incredible Shrinking Man; all the better to keep him in his back pocket.
I’ll let the writer or the director decide that. What has to be emphasised over and over again was Brown’s total superiority and Barton’s humiliation. From that moment before kick-off when he stands with his head bowed so he doesn’t have to meet Brown’s gaze, he was overmatched in every way. At the end of the game, Brown says something to him.
“I was just making sure he was all right,” Brown said when asked later.
That has to be part of the story; people can script it however they like.
Celtic’s barn-storming display wrecked more than just Barton’s psychology.
It wrecked his teams as well, and that segues nicely into the next big set-piece.
But before we even get to that, Brown’s post-match interview would have to be featured. Whoever plays Brown shouldn’t even need script pages; let him say it exactly as Brown did in the aftermath, with that look of utter disdain on his face.
“Easy, yeah it was fine, there was no battle whatsoever. I think the score line talks for itself, it was pretty much men against boys at the end of the day.”
If you wanted to add a little fictional touch, you could have Jailbird Joey tossing an empty beer bottle at his telly watching that later.
Joey Blows A Gasket: The Training Ground Detonation That Launches The Final Act
We don’t really know what went on during the training ground bust-up that gave us such joy when the story broke in the papers, so a little dramatic license can be taken here.
Obviously we’ve been hearing rumours about it for a long time, and there are really several different versions of the story.
In some of them there’s a lot of bad language and even the spilling of blood; any writer would need to decide whether they want to keep this strictly comedic or risk an 18 certificate.
I would tend to go with that myself.
What we do know is that Mr Ego decided that he’d let the rest of the players know how he felt about their performances, and that he would let the manager know how he felt about his. The resultant carnage got so bad that they sent him home and the press was briefed that he would probably never play for the club again.
As funny as all this is to us, their boardroom couldn’t have been a place filled with laughter at the time.
It would be appropriate to have a couple of scenes of scheming where they decided that it presented them an opportunity to get a first-rate dud off the wage bill.
Because, believe me, those conversations were taking place.
I simply remember that day as being one of great hilarity; this was the blow-up we’d been waiting for since BartRon signed, and when it arrived it was every bit as glorious as we’d been hoping for. The balloon had gone up, but it wasn’t over yet because there were another couple of twists still to come, and at least one of high comedy that still gets us laughing today.
Barton Comes Out Swinging. Jailbird Joey Drives Over What’s Left Of His Ibrox Career.
At this point, Jailbird Joey is at his snarling, angry best.
Remember what Richard Wilson had written about how he had “reinvented himself” as some kind of intellectual and that his past deeds were no longer relevant to his character? How’s that looking at this point in the movie? Not great, huh?
By this point, Barton had gone all Raging Bullshit, and was spoiling for a fight.
A few shots of his snarling visage would be appropriate here as he did the rounds of the media and trashed everyone at Ibrox. At one point, don’t forget, he said that if he had the chance to do it all over again he wouldn’t have signed for them in the first place.
At this point in the film, you want to consider a scene of him going home and wistfully listening to The Wolfetones with a bottle of beer.
Him singing along softly to the Celtic Symphony.
That’s how I’d shoot it anyway.
But of course, you don’t want too many scenes of pathos … this is, after all, a comedy. So a few scenes of Barton’s press conferences where he accuses the club of being out of control and of not really know what he’s done would be appropriate, even as he’s sticking the boot into them.
Joey Barton Waves Goodbye. This Is The End. (Sort Of.)
As a result of those interviews – slotted neatly into the middle of a self-promoting book tour, Barton was paid off by the club. The movie can draw the ending out as much as they like, but I think it would be appropriate to have the black screen and some text to remind people of what he brought to the game he was going to boss.
He was at Ibrox for a mere 113 days.
He played a grand total of eight games.
He played in wins over the mighty football powers of Annan Athletic, Stranraer, Peterhead, Motherwell and Dundee.
He played in draws against Killie and Hamilton.
And he played in the 5-1 drubbing at the hands of Celtic, where Brown owned him for the 90 minutes.
It was his final appearance for the club.
Like I said, the rules of narrative structure have been completely blown with this one.
If you assume he was on £20,000 a week, he cost them, in wages alone for his time at the club, somewhere in the region of £320,000 before whatever he got as a pay-off.
To make sure the club was getting rid of him properly, and spinning it their way, they leaked his medical records to The Daily Record. No movie would be complete without that salient detail. And it wouldn’t be complete without his foolishly accepting a non-disclosure agreement as part of the settlement. We were, thereby, denied the ending we really wanted to see, where he aired all the dirty laundry in public. As it stands he can’t even mention any of it in a future book.
Joey Barton: Still Talking Nonsense Even After All This Time.
And right here is where you’d end the film proper, with his latest presser where he told the listeners and viewers that he “went out at the top” playing against the best.
Actually, his career ended in Glasgow playing against Scott Brown.
The writer and director will have to decide if this film is going to be shot through the prism of their short-lived rivalry; if it is then it might be apt to mention Barton’s numerous clubs, the way his tenure has nearly always ended in disaster or disgrace, and his two English second tier titles, the only honours he’s ever won. Contrast that with Scott Brown’s career, and his eight Premier Leagues, his four Scottish Cup’s and his five League Cup’s (one of them with Hibs.)
As the movie fades out on Barton’s delusional final bow, with the laughter of the audience ringing around the theatre, another cut to black …
Then up come the words of Richard Wilson, writing upon his departure.
“Barton’s Rangers career would appear now to be effectively over. If the manager Mark Warburton felt reassured that the player could return to the squad without his authority seeming undermined, then Barton would still be available for selection … he is, by his own admission, a blunt and assertive figure in the dressing room and his short spell at Rangers has delivered little worth on the field. The team has already looked more convincing in his absence.”
One more cut to black and this;
“In the months that followed, the Ibrox club continued its own inexorable slide. Mark Warburton was fired by the club on 10 February 2017.”
Because the real comedy here is the way the Sevconuts and their media lackeys keep looking for happy endings.
We got ours anyway.