Last Warning For Barton? We'd Be So Lucky!
By Nu Mad
Updated Saturday, 8th November 2008
Joe Kinnear has warned Joey Barton not to give his critics any further ammunition. Will he listen?
Kinnear keeps telling us the stories about his 'Crazy Gang' at Wimbledon ... camp fire tales which have been dredged up to entertained 'After Dinner' lunches for years.
But Vinnie Jones and his gang of pirates did their kicking on the field ... Barton does his kicking anywhere but!
The awesome Billy Whitehurst told us the tale when he was a
Sheffield United player with Jones, and bunch of Wednesday fans smashed up Jones' car outside a pub.
They went into the pub, Whitehurst knocked 'seven bells' out of five of them and the rest ran ... but not as far as Jones ran! He was first out the pub!
Joe Kinnear: "None of this is going to go away. Joey is playing with all this stuff over his head and it is coming back to haunt him and the only way he can answer his critics is to play good football.
"He has to just be himself and play as well as he has been. He was outstanding the other night.
"When he came on against
Sunderland, he got stories for the wrong reason, and again, it marred his performance. What happened the other night was unfortunate.
"But the thing is with Joey, he has got good character. I speak to him on a daily basis and I have spoken to him and said, 'You are in the limelight, you can't afford to give them what they are looking for. You are a silly boy'.
"But he is so competitive. He is a winner, and like all competitors and winners, they sometimes over-step the mark because of their nature.
"He has got to control that and once he manages to do that, then he is as good as most midfielders around in the Premier League.
"He is a winner for sure, so I don't ever want him to lose that. I don't want him to lose the fact that he has that winning mentality, I don't want that to be taken away from him.
"But he has been battered from pillar to post and I have got to make sure I keep him in the right frame of mind.
"I don't want it to get to him, all this stuff that is going on around him.
"He has to live with it, we know that, but he also has to focus on playing good football."
