Joey Barton’s far-right rebrand points to sad malaise among football’s lost boys | Jonathan Liew

While Barton’s empty intellectual shtick was just that, his misogynistic rants are symptomatic of something more sinister

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. Then, several years after you’ve won, a former Queens Park Rangers midfielder inexplicably tries to fight you again in an attempt to promote his podcast. Like a catchy maxim ripped from the pages of the philosophy books that he has almost certainly only skim-read, the tale of Joey Barton can be interpreted pretty much however you want.

Perhaps the first reaction to the former Rangers substitute’s latest wave of attention-seeking is also the most natural: ignore, starve of oxygen, move on. Partly this is because his motivations for railing against female pundits in men’s football are so cynically transparent.

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