A day with Joey Barton at Fleetwood Town, in the week of his first competitive match as a manager, is like no other in English football. It starts just after breakfast at the League One club’s gleaming training centre, Poolfoot Farm. Seven miles from Blackpool and modelled on facilities at Bayern Munich and Ajax, Fleetwood’s base is calm and good humoured.
“You’ve got to talk to Frog because he’s a reader and we’re having incredible conversations about JFK conspiracy theories,” Barton says as he introduces me to Tony Barlow, Fleetwood’s burly head of security. A former paratrooper who learned how to read and write only when he was 21, the erudite Frog offers detailed views on what might have happened on the grassy knoll before assessing Gavin Menzies’ theory that Chinese explorers discovered America decades before Christopher Columbus.
Fleetwood have also been on an incredible journey. The current incarnation of the club began in 1997, in the 10th tier of the English league system. Wwith the financial support and vision of their chairman, Andy Pilley, they achieved six promotions in 10 years to reach League One. Pilley has now turned to the 35-year-old Barton in the hope his maverick intelligence will help gain promotion to the Championship.
On Saturday they play Wimbledon at home and Barton smiles when asked if he is nervous. “It comes in fits and starts,” he says. “I’ll soon go into my Bill Walsh zone. You know the great American football coach who said: ‘The score takes care of itself?’ Of course you can make tweaks psychologically and tactically – but the main body of pre-season work is done. In the end you feel powerless as you hand it over.”
That body of work looks impressive. After a chaotic and controversial playing career, Barton is meticulous and warm with his players during a video review of last Saturday’s victory over Morecambe. Fleetwood have won all seven pre-season games but Barton is a sharp analyst when it comes to improvement. He also highlights The Shit People Don’t See [a phrase he lifted from a visit to Saracens] as he shows how a training-ground routine resulted in a simple goal. Barton ensures the session ends in riotous laughter.
Training is short and sharp, with a game to follow against Chorley that evening, and Barton allows his backroom staff, including his former QPR and Rangers teammate Clint Hill, to run some drills. He observes quietly beneath a baseball cap.
Barton’s early years as a player were blighted by anger and violence. He was imprisoned for six months in 2008 and his playing career came to a shuddering halt when the FA banned him for 13 months last year after he was found guilty of placing 1,260 bets on football matches.
Amid the acrimony Barton reinvented himself as a renaissance man. Who could forget the mockery that greeted some of Barton’s most memorable tweets: “Sitting eating sushi in the city, incredibly chilled out reading Nietzsche #stereotypicalfootballer.” Barton also appeared on Question Time, studied philosophy and discussed politics, culture and football.
“I’ve had enough contrast in my career,” Barton says, “so if a player comes to me with a problem I’ve probably been through it myself. I’ve been through many scrapes and rather than somebody who has never been in trouble or had to delve into the reason why things happen, my chaotic career will help me as a manager.”
At lunch, the players join the coaching staff. I sit with Hill and Barton, who says: “The key for us is human connections. At lunch it’s important you converse with your teammates. No phones. It’s common sense but not common practice at all football clubs.”
Barton offers a striking mix of conviction and vulnerability. “As a player I had more belief in me than anyone,” he stresses. “If I’d have listened to everybody I would’ve been on a building site. There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance on my part but I was taught by my grandmother to believe in myself. So I have extreme confidence in my abilities and that also comes from being fantastically well-prepared and having great people around me.”
I joke with Barton that it sounds as if he will soon be ready to manage in the Champions League. He shakes his head. “Frank de Boer was sacked after four games last season [by Crystal Palace]. I could be on the scrapheap in four games’ time. You have to be careful, knowing how fragile the ecosystem is. Isn’t Mourinho up for the sack today?”
At his first press conference as Fleetwood’s manager, Barton quipped that 30 million people want him to fail. “It was tongue-in-cheek. Thirty million people probably don’t give a shit what I’m doing. This is not life or death. It’s just football management. I’m not saying Fleetwood are going to shock the world. Fleetwood is 25,000 people and it’s not affluent. But I believe we can empower the area.
“We’ve seen it on a much larger scale with [Jürgen] Klopp at Liverpool. He’s energised the red half of the city. The feelgood factor carries over into people’s lives, into the workplace and home life. If we can have 10% of that impact at Fleetwood we’re doing our jobs.”
Barton is so eminently sensible today I remind him of our last interview when he was at war with Rangers and barred from training. “At Burnley, both before and after Rangers, I’d built enough social credit with the group that whenever I spoke it carried weight because they knew I cared about the team. When I went to Rangers they had just played Motherwell in the cup. I was asked my opinion and it wasn’t pretty. I then said: ‘We’re in a maze and I know the fucking way out. Follow me.’ People were like: ‘Who the fuck is he?’ You have to earn the stripes, and their trust, to lead.
How does Barton expect Steven Gerrard to do at Rangers? “Really well. He’s a good man and he was a phenomenal player. If he carries those attributes across there’s a good chance he’ll be a phenomenal coach. I know Scotty Arfield and Jon Flanagan and their feedback is really positive. Stevie’s also taken my second cousin Tom Culshaw [as a coach].
“We always go on about hiring foreign managers. Well, there are not enough British candidates so we’ve got to put our balls on the chopping block. Frank Lampard has had a good start at Derby. Kevin Nolan will do well [at Notts County]. I was the youngest manager until the guy at Bradford [32-year-old Michael Collins] got appointed. Frank going to Derby and Stevie going to Rangers? Phenomenal clubs. But if you asked me would I swap them for this club, I genuinely wouldn’t. Fleetwood is the absolute sweet spot for me right now.”
Manchester United do not seem to occupy the same sweet spot for Mourinho. “There will be a method in his madness,” Barton says. “I’ve got incredible respect for him and everything he says is calculated. But how can anybody compare to Alex Ferguson? He’s also got Pep Guardiola on the other side of the city doing brilliantly. Now Klopp, and Liverpool, are going places. I think Mourinho does best with an underdog team. Even when he went to Real Madrid, Barcelona were the best team in the world. At United the expectation is to win all the time but maybe he’s tapering expectations.
“To be a top manager you’ve got to be a psychologist. Shankly. Ferguson. Jock Stein. Mourinho. Pep. I’ve seen the trailer for this City documentary and the stuff in the dressing room goes way beyond tactics. He says: ‘If you want to hate me, hate me. We play better when you hate me.’ He’s probing them – because sport is psychological warfare.”
Barton jokes that he studied philosophy rather than psychology. But he also insists that, “psychology was a massive part of my playing career because I wasn’t as good as many other players. I had to find other ways.
“One of the greatest things, even as a youngster who made many high-profile errors, was meeting Peter Kay from Sporting Chance when I was 22. It was meant to be for anger management but we just discussed male psychology. We spent hours talking war strategies, from Churchill to Genghis Khan. We’d go through Jungian archetypes: king, warrior, joker, lover, magician. Doing the philosophy degree was delving back into that intellectual space which helps me as a manager.”
Barton has often brought trouble on himself – in management, he will need to be smarter than he was as a player. When he was announced as Fleetwood’s manager in June he suggested he would temper his use of social media. But after the World Cup he was criticised for suggesting Gareth Southgate . It was actually a measured series of tweets in which Barton praised Southgate for restoring a broken link between the England team and their supporters. He then pointed out that England had lost three matches.
“Sometimes it’s important to give a contra opinion because we are as near to being sheep as we’ve ever been. There was a real public take from the start of the tournament to be enthusiastic and positive come what may. But the Epicurean position is ‘Don’t get too high or too low. There are many things I would have done differently as the England manager but who the fuck am I to comment? A novice manager starting out in League One. People can’t wait to put you in your place.
“It was a great tournament from a PR standpoint. The nation is now engaged, they love Southgate because he’s a decent man and he’s got the passion back. The players look happy and they reached the semi-final. But we’ve got so caught up with naming tube stations after Gareth Southgate that we forget how to be stronger next time.”
Barton also needs to cope with his personal demons. His gambling addiction and subsequent feelings of depression tested him after the FA punished him with a ban in April 2017 . “I was faced with the reality that football had gone. I had three or four days where I couldn’t get out of bed. I’ve never suffered from depression but I imagine it was the early onset. I was fortunate my friends and family were quick to get me out of that slump.”
Barton says the reason for him becoming a compulsive gambler was simple. “I did it out of boredom because I have a very inquisitive mind that needs to be active. Management is the perfect job because when my mind is focused it’s incredibly productive. When it gets unfocused or I have lots of free time we hit problems. I now feel incredibly motivated and lucky to be in this job.”
In the last few hours before Saturday’s kick-off, Barton will be examined in a new way. It will be fascinating to see if the lessons he has tried to impart have been absorbed and how he deals with the intense pressure of management. “That feeling of being powerless, apart from making some tactical changes, is tough for somebody like me. You have to hand yourself over to a higher power and in my case, that’s the team.
“I am influenced hugely by American sport. So I’ll be thinking of all those great American football coaches – Vince Lombardi, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin, Bill Walsh. They all handed themselves over to teams they had prepared well. Walsh’s mantra of the score takes care of itself will be in my head.
“Of course we could lose the first four games and then you’re like, ‘Fucking hell, I’m shit.’ But I think we’ll do well. I believe in the process so I want to say this on record: ‘I hold myself to the same standard. The score takes care of itself. Believe in the process. Confidence comes from good preparation.’ We will be the best prepared team we can be which gives us an incredible opportunity to get a positive result.”
The new manager looks up from his desk. His notes, books and plans are spread around him. “So I’m really looking forward to the first game on Saturday,” Barton says intently, before laughing softly. “We’ll see then if I genuinely do believe that the score takes care of itself.”
The Guardian Sport
